Rivers United FC of Port Harcourt’s squad has been rated ‘not good enough’ to win this season’s CAF Champions League, Sports247 reports.
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This is the scathing verdict of a Lagos-based coach, Angel Ebiye Jombo, who reasoned that The Pride of Rivers does not have enough quality players to help them rule Africa.
With The Garden City outfit having lost away to the defending champions, Pyramids FC of Egypt and at home with RSC Berkane of Morocco in their first two games of the group stage, Jombo appears to have been vindicated in his verdict.
With their third group match hanging far ahead on the 28th of January next year, Jombo says he is already apprehensive of their chances of scaling into the knock-out stages.
He stated as much and more during ‘Hot Seat’ segment of Inside Naija Sports, a live streaming programme on YouTube, airing at 11:45am every Friday from the studio of Sports247 Naija TV.
Jombo retorted, “If you want to compete with the best teams in Africa, you must have most of the best players in your country’s league.
“How many players from Rivers United are in the Nigerian national team? When Enyimba were African champions, we remember that they had some players in the national team.
“Those are some of the things you need to check. You have to see if the players in your squad are good enough to compete in the national team. But the answer for now is none are there for Rivers United.”
The founder and head coach of United Squad Football Academy of Kosofe, Lagos went on with a general swipe at a situation in which clubs that win the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) end up selling their best players and have to start from scratch the following season, thereby reducing their chances in the CCL.
He pointed out, “Many of our clubs are into the aspect of wanting to sell their players at the end of each season and make money. They don’t think about the long term.
“So, after winning the league, they sell off their best players, and they go back to square one. That’s what happened to Remo Stars.
“They sold off their best players with which they won the league last season. They then rushed to recruit many new players, but they could not blend in time for the Champions League.
“They ended up embarrassing us at home against Mamelodi Sundowns, and I was ashamed for them when I saw the highlights. That shouldn’t happen to our champion at home.
“It was a big shame for them and for the Nigerian league as a whole,” the highly articulate member of Lagos State Football Coaches Association submitted.
