John Mikel Obi, the Super Eagles of Nigeria and Chelsea legend, has spoken up about former Nigerian coach, Sunday Oliseh.
Obi spoke about his terrible
experience with Sunday Oliseh as national team coach, blasting the former coach
as “the worst manager ever.”
Obi bared his mind during
Episode 3 of his ObiOne podcast tagged “Taking the Mikel: Sunday Oliseh, look
away now!”
The AFCON 2013 winner disclosed
that Oliseh confronted team leaders on the first day of camp.
He added that the former
Borussia Dortmund midfielder’s divisive approach led to Vincent Enyeama leaving
the team.
“I
remember the first day he came into the camp. Then, we reported to the camp for
International duties, he came straight at me and Vincent Enyeama, the
goalkeeper, who also was very powerful back then. He came straight at us and
Elderson Echiejile, and he said a few things. He said he heard there was a lot
of player power with us. Then Enyeama was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Where
are you getting all of these from? We are a nice group, and you just come in,
and the first thing is to attack us?
“He
was like ‘I heard about you guys.’ And then Enyeama stood up and told him he
couldn’t say that because we had been here for so many years. They started
arguing, and literally, they were going to have a fight. He took Enyeama out of
the team, and he came at us saying he was going to take us out of the team. He
said he was going to take us out of the team; he said he was going to make sure
we didn’t play anymore.
“Enyeama
could not take it, and despite my pleas, he left the camp angrily and never
came back.”
The
retired midfielder further added that Oliseh, now 49 years old and without a
club, was clueless as a coach that blamed voodoo for his failure.
“He
(Oliseh) had absolutely no clue of how a manager is,” Obi started. “He was a
fantastic guy in his playing days, but as a coach, he was very terrible. He
absolutely had no clue of what he was doing. The players never understood
anything he was doing, and he did not know what he was doing. He was just
confused because he just came in and destroyed the team togetherness.
“His
excuse when he got fired was that the people and FA did voodoo on him not to
succeed. He was easily the worst manager I played under. He was so bitter with
everybody, jealous with everybody, and had no respect for speaking to anybody, whether
the physio or anybody.”
Oliseh
spent only eight months as Super Eagles manager between 2015 and 2016, and was
recently a part of the FIFA technical committee to the Qatar 2022 FIFA World
Cup.
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