Mike Idoko, the vice chairman of Lobi Stars of Makurdi, has expressed sadness over the exclusion of home-based players from the Super Eagles list that will face the Sierra Leone in the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin City, Edo State on Friday, November 13, 2020.
Idoko said the total blackout of the league players from the national team cast aspersion on the Nigeria Professional Football League.
“I am really surprised that we don’t have any home-based that can play in the Super Eagles. The question to ask is, ‘why are we even playing the league? That means we don’t even need to play the league at all if any of our players are not good to be called into the Super Eagles. It is just a matter of you bringing players from abroad. You will recall that the most successful coach we have had in the history of Nigerian league is Clemens Westerhof,” he said.
“He (Westerhof) went round the country and picked players and it took him five years to build that solid team that we had. I am really surprised maybe because we did not qualify for the CHAN and other regional competitions but I think the technical adviser (Gernot Rohr) should be able to give chance to some of the home-based players to encourage the league because for now, people will look at it and said this our league is not what it is supposed to be if we cannot get a single player in the Super Eagles line up in international competitions,” he added.
