Oliseh, a coach bedevilled by fallouts and controversies

It was not good viewing or good news that the Super Eagles could not defeat Swaziland in the first leg of their FIFA 2018 World Cup match on Friday, but reports from the Eagles camp say that there has been another fallout between Sunday Oliseh and one of his players.

So it seems Super Eagles manager, Oliseh, will continue to have his tenure as head of the national team dogged by various controversies. The fallout of his first match away to Tanzania was the replacement of Lukman Haruna after 36 minutes.

When the team went to Belgium for friendly matches – Vincent Enyeama retired. After the match against Cameroon, Emmanuel Emenike announced his retirement.

On the call-ups for the match against Swaziland, Oliseh was ‘forced’ to include Kelechi Iheanacho in the list after initially leaving the in-form Manchester City forward out. He then admitted that he had been watching the youngster.

On Wednesday last week, Oliseh said he was not in support of any Code of Conduct document to be signed by his players – a statement which could cause some infraction with his employers, the Nigeria Football Federation.

And now it seems another player, Rabiu Ibrahim, has bitten the dust. Reports from Lobamba after Friday’s match said the coach was pretty miffed at the midfielder’s performance and made this known sternly in the dressing room.

Ibrahim, sent on for Sylvester Igbonu at the beginning of the second half was taken out 21 minutes afterwards, ostensibly for not following the coach’s instructions.

But Ibrahim was said to have tried to absolve himself of blame which led to a series of hot exchanges between the player and his coach. It was also revealed that some senior players took a clearly distraught Ibrahim to Oliseh’s room to “beg” [just like Lukman is begging for another chance] but the former Super Eagles captain is said to have refused to entertain any discussion.

With this latest bust-up, the coach is not setting a good precedent and because of this, some players might start making excuses not to join up with the national team as it has invariably become a ‘threat zone’.