Sports
Eguavoen Flays Moroccan Officials Over Attitude OnTraining
Austin Eguavoen has been left livid by the antics of Morocco officials, who denied his Olympic team training opportunities on Tuesday.
The Nigeria squad were due to train at the facility of clubside Raja, but were prevented by club officials, who claimed to be acting on the directives of the football federation.
“You cannot train here today, it’s not allowed. Our teams want to use both pitches, sorry my friends, sorry, am only following directives from the football federation. I don’t want to lose my job,” said one of the three officials of Raja Club Athletics as they ushered the Olympic Eagles out of the Raja Astro turf.
The same officials had on Monday denied the team access to the natural grass pitch despite an initial agreement that the team would only be allowed to use the pitch on the said time.
Eguavoen was miffed, albeit philosophical.
“What can we do? There is nothing we can do about it. Again I would say in the Moroccan part, they are not being friendly.
“Their action is not sportsman like; the Nigeria Football Federation had an agreement with them that everything was going to be available.
“But getting here, there is nothing available, we can’t get a pitch to train, its synthetic and that’s counter productive. And to my greatest surprise, its cold, windy and rainy here and we are training with T-shirts, that’s very dangerous,” Eguavoen lamented.
He however urged Nigerians to keep praying for the team; assuring that the team will do its best to pick an Olympic ticket.
Meanwhile, the wintry kit of the team has arrived at the Anfa Port Hotel, camp.
England captain Harry Kane netted a hat-trick to guide Bayern Munich to an impressive victory against Stuttgart.
Kane’s goals, plus one from Kingsley Coman, helped Bayern end a three-game winless run in all competitions.
They faced a tough task against a Stuttgart side who sat back and limited their chances, leading Vincent Kompany’s side to enter the break frustrated and with the deadlock unbroken.
Bayern eventually found a way past Stuttgart’s steely defence when Kane drilled a low effort into the bottom corner from around 30 yards out after Joshua Kimmich overturned possession.
Former Nigeria goalkeeper, Dosu Joseph, is full of thanks to God after he miraculously survived another life-threatening automobile accident recent at Kara, along the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way, where a heavy-duty truck ran into his SUV.
Narrating his ordeal, the 51-year-old, who guided Nigeria to gold in the Men’s Football Tournament of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, broke the news in a statement on his social media handles on Friday.
“To God be the glory, another death escaped by Grace and Mercy of God. Me and my friend SM were at Enyo Filling Station after Ojodu Berger bus stop to get fuel on Wednesday, October 2, 2024, around 6 p.m. when this MACK truck fully loaded with iron, with registration number LND 470 XX, left the road and crushed my car beyond repairs. Thank God for life,” he stated.
This is the second time the soft-spoken club proprietor will cheat death by a whisker, having been involved in an accident in 1997 that ended his career at 23 and left his spinal cord in bad shape.
He helped Julius Berger win the Nigeria FA Cup in November 1997 shortly a memorable Olympic outing by keeping a clean sheet in the finals against Katsina United. The following year, he was involved in the auto along Ikorodu Road, Lagos, which not only cut his career short but also left him almost paralysed, ending his spell at Serie A club Reggiana.
The former Nigeria international, who also kept goal for Julius Berger FC, said the case has been reported to Isheri Police Station, Ogun State, where the driver is currently detained and the truck also seized.
According to him, the owner of the truck said he can’t fix the badly damaged SUV until after a year.
Ex – Super Eagles of Nigeria, Okwuchukwu Waobikeze has observed that sports development in Nigeria is going down.
According to him, grassroots sports is very important, without it, the administrators cannot get it right. So everybody should key into grassroots sports development, he said.
Waobikeze said this last Wednesday in an interview with sports journalists shortly after the Port Harcourt All Stars Independence football festival (OCTOBERFEST) at the Port Harcourt club, Rivers State.
He explained that for sports administrators to get it right, grassroots development is key. “They should be organising competition at the grassroots level to fish out the young ones for different sporting activities.
“Grassroots sports is very important so the administrators have to go back to the grassroots.
” Sports Development in Nigeria is going down we need to go back to the basics.
“Look at the just concluded Paris Olympics, Nigeria did not win any medal.
” Our football team did not even qualify for the Olympics. We are going down.
” If they should go back to the grassroots, they will get young ones in the games and talents will be developed.
” I started from school games, to youth games before playing for the national team. Now everybody wants to fly board to play professional football and a lot do not know the basics of the game.
” A lot of people did not know the little things about the game, they just want to play. It is not done so,” Waobikeze stated.
Kiadum Edookor
