As reactions continue trailing the poor performance of Nigeria’s home-based players at the Championship of African Nations (CHAN 2024), a former international striker, Benedict Akwuegbu, has called for an overhaul of the country’s domestic football scene.
Sports247 reports that the Scotland ’89 FIFA U17 World Cup revelation opined that there is a dire need for a revival of the Nigerian tradition, with better structure and renewed mentality also to be put in place.
Akwuegbu, who grew up in Jos and was fondly called ‘The Black Bomber,’ wondered why the CHAN Eagles would fall scandalously to Sudan after losing their first match against Senegal, and reasoned that a thorough post-mortem is needed for corrections to be made.
The former Sturm Graz of Austria attacker roared, “We have to be moving forward, not backwards. We also need to check the drawing board and know exactly why these bad results happened.
“However, one big problem that we have is that we always like to overlook things. When things are not right, you need to do an evaluation. You need to go back and figure out why things are not going according to plan.”
Akwuegbu concluded by advocating ways out of the woods, asserting: “We must have a better structure, we must have a tradition, we must have a way we do our things and make them work.
“We must have a way to run things properly and, in case they don’t go well, we’ll know exactly where to pinpoint the causes.
“That way, we’ll be able to find out easily what happened if things go wrong. So, we just have to change our mentality entirely,” concluded Akwuegbu, who is now the technical director at Mighty Jets of Jos.
Sports247 reports further that the home-based Eagles will be seeking a consolation win against Congo on Tuesday in their last match at CHAN 2024.
Victory would see Nigeria finish third in the group ahead of Congo, who need all three points to help them qualify, if either Senegal or Sudan loses the group’s other last game, both of which will hold simultaneously.
