Former Nigerian goalkeeper, Peter Rufai believes the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) players have done enough to be a continuous part of the Super Eagles after their impressive display against Mexico and Ecuador in an international friendlies.
Recall that the Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro featured some of the invited NPFL players in the team’s 2-1 loss to Mexico and 1-0 defeat to Ecuador on Friday.
However, in an interview with Completesports.com, the 1994 Africa Cup of Nations winner, stated that a few of the players have shown that they are ready for the big stage if given the opportunity.
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He also commended the performance of Faisal Sani and Ishaq Rafiu for their strong display against Ecuador and insisted that the NPFL players deserve to be part of Peseiro’s 2023 AFCON qualifiers plan.
“I am very impressed with the performance of the NPFL players in the two friendlies they played against Mexico and Ecuador.
“I Feel really impressed most especially with the display of Faisal Sani, Ishaq Rafiu and few others. It is a sign that the players can hold their own if given the opportunity.
“I am optimistic that Jose Peseiro will definitely have them in his 2023 AFCON qualifying plans going by their performance.”
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COMMENTS
Plz plz plz,I was one of those that campaigned for home based players but each time they are invited the difference btw them and foreign players is easily spotted , always in a hurry to shoot at goal from impossible angle,misplaced passes,no confidence ,the match against Mexico exposed the midfielder that was falling up and down when Mexico counter attacks,Faisal sanni against Ecuador was an eyesore till Aina and Dennis came in and changed the game.
They should be encouraged at all costs because late Keshi has proven they can hold their own when allowed to grow with the team. KESHI FORMULA IS STILL THE WAY TO GO.
ANY HOMEBASE PLAYERS CLAIM TO BE A GOOD PLAYERS SHOULD GO AND PROVE HIMSELF IN CHAN COMPETITION BEFORE HE SHOULD BE INVITED TO FULL-TIME SUPER EAGLE TEAM.
How many minutes was given to Abraham Marcus to be “allowed to grow with the team” before we all saw that this one has the quality to play for the SE or get another call up after his first….?
How many minutes was given to Calvin Bassey to be “allowed to grow with the team” before we all saw that this one has the quality to play for the SE or get another call up after his first….?
How many minutes was given to Joe Aribo to be “allowed to grow with the team” before we all saw that this one has the quality to play for the SE or get another call up after his first….?
How many minutes was given to Kingsley Michael to be “allowed to grow with the team” before we all saw that this one has the quality to play for the SE or get another call up after his first….?
How many minutes was given to the likes of Chidera Ejuke, Cyriel Dessers, Zaidu Sanusi, Innocent Bonke etc to be “allowed to grow with the team” before we all saw that ok, these ones have the quality to play for the SE and hence deserve another call up….?
But despite deceiving yourselves all the time that they are as good and better than their FB counterparts, when they are eventually given a chance and they fail with flying colours, y’all will cook up excuses over excuses in request for more time to “grow with the team”….and then after 2-3 invites they are shipped out to whatever north african or backwater european league you’d planned to ship them to ab initio, just using the SE as your perfect market place.
Tell your home-based players to go and grow in the CAF CL and CAF CC and in CHAN.
The Super Eagles camp is not a nursery. It is the jungle itself.
YOU, EX-PLAYERS HAVE STARTED AGAIN. YOU ARE THE ONE ALWAYS COMPLAIN THAT IS NOT PROPER FOR ANY COACHES TO BE EXPERIMENT PLAYERS DURING QUALIFIERS MATCHES.
OR SHOULD PESEIRO DROP PLAYERS LIKE OSIMHEN, DESSERS FOR VICTOR MBAOMA JUST BECAUSE HE WANT TO GIVE CHANCE TO HOMEBASE PLAYERS.
The question we need to ask is who are these homebased players getting invitations? Are they the best in their position in the NPFL across all teams?
If invitations extended to foreign based professionals go to the best ones, why can’t the homebased invitations go to the best homebased players?
The guys invited from Katsina United, Enyimba and Rivers United, are they the best in their position at home?
We saw a young Daniel Daga, Samson Lawal, The guy from Remo star and Gombe United in the recently concluded AFCON U-20 team for Nigeria play good sensible football.
Those boys are homebased too, so if that level we have boys based at home that can display solid football skills and knowledge, then it means there are more sensible and better mature players in the league too.
The question we need to really interrogate is whether the ones who get callups to Super Eagles are the best or those with connections looking to have SE platform market their sales abroad with percentages to their minders.
I believe there are very good players in the league who can hold their own against any team. However, those ones may not have NFF and Super Eagles coaches backing their ascendancy to such high platforms.
Talent availability in the NPFL league is not the question… the question is whether sincerity is being used to invite those supposedly invited as meriting a callup!
I believe when selection is based 100% on merit we have great ball players in every position available in the league. Talking about proving themselves in CHAN, if average ones with connection are again selected… it will still paint a misleading picture and narrative that all homebased players are not good enough… Where is John Noble who was the best home goalkeeper today in Rohr and Alloy Agu’s regime?
Selection to the national team should always be based on merit! That should be the norm.
Even from the best of hearts, It would be ilogical clamouring for home based players that’s unproven in any stage other than a Nigerian league lying in the backwater of leagues. On what stand rather than emotions.
We all see that the Brazilians,Argentines,North Africans,South Africans that pick from their leagues, their clubsides always perform well in continental competitions! Even at such, the selections from the aforementioned are minuscule at best because it is an open knowledge that the best play in Europe.
Although they didn’t get alot of opportunities due to limited space, Back then no one needed to clamour for home based players when Enyimba, Julius Berger, Enugu Rangers, Pillars, Dolphins (reconstituted), Heartland even Ocean Boys were doing tremendously at the continental level. They sold themselves by their play. And it was visible to all.
We should fixated in fixing our league.we should clamour a proper manage league. If the league is well run,things will fall in place organically, like it should.
For what is worth, merit should always hold sway.
We have to look at sincerity in selecting players wherever they may be based… It’s no longer logical to continue to paint all homebased players with same brush… this is so because the so-called foreign based have failed seriously recently too. They did not show us why they should be respected in AFCON and also they failed to deliver the world cup ticket… So in essence we need the best players on proven merit from everywhere… Ekong a foreign based is still scoring silly own goals… So what are we really saying?
@Jimmyball
We are all Nigerians.
We all want to see our league succeed. We all want the best for the Eagles. We want the best players to represent us.
We seek fairness. Only where there is fairness,will success be achieved seamlessly.
But we shouldn’t be blinded by emotions.
Currently ,Which home based player(s) can we really upon?!
The ones that have been failing on the continental stage recently!.
CAF cup, CAF Champions league, CHAN.. all fails.
In just the concluded double friendlies, would you rationally say the home based that played did enough to justify that they’re better than their foreign counterparts?!
Let me that your game and ask; With all sincerity;
If you’re going to take out Ekong;
Who would you replace him with?
I presume no homebase would come to your mind at first;
Akpoguma,Ndah even an Izuchukwu( I hope I spelt is name right) would come to mind..
Don’t get me wrong,I agree, there might be good players in the NPFL but the Super Eagles is not a training ground. This should be for the elite! This is it. There isn’t any level higher. Due to precedent and current situation,the homebase haven’t given us enough to prove that they deserve that spot.
My clarion call is to kill corruption and fix the league, so our clamour can justified.
Hahahaha
Mr Hush,
Our clubs playing on the continent for the past 10 years have not been recruiting players on merit too I suppose. That must be the reason why winning 2 rounds of preliminaries to reach the group stages of CAF competitions has perennially remained a bridge too far for them. We presented 4 clubs last year and all 4 didn’t reach the Group stages.
The last time I checked, clubs recruit the best players in the league in readiness to storm the continent, yet teams from Tanzanian, Togolese, Guinean and other small Arab teams feed them dust in preliminary rounds even before they get to the stage where real competition starts.
In the 2000s, the like of Julius Berger, Enyimba and Dolphins will record away wins as high as 4-0 or 5-2 in prelims of these club competitions to start with. Fast forward till these days, even a 2nd division club eliminated one of our representatives
Common let’s just stop deceiving ourselves already.
And the most irritating part of the charade is that once this homebased boy who used tobe the first name on the SE list as HB player crosses immigration at murtala Mohammed airport to wherever his agents are shipping him to, he ceases to continue being good enough to merit a national team call up.
I can bet if Ndah were still a HB, he would have been amongst players called up for these friendlies.
Once again who the hell are we deceiving….?
Thank God we have a new set of coaches now…..yet same outcomes. 8 has become 2 after just a few days of assessment. I guess this guy too hates homebased players. I wonder which coach will see real quality players and cast them to the winds.
So Jimmy,you now believe home based players are better.
You have an assignment then.
Mention any home based player better than the following.
1. Ola Aina
2. Bassey
3. Balogun
4. Zaidu
5. Ndidi
6. Aribo
7. Iwobi
8. Chukwueze
9. Ademola
10.Osihmen
Or the following
1. Ebuehi
2. Awaziem
3. Omeruo
4. Ajayi
5. Onyeka
6. Michael Kingsley
7. Yusuf (In Belgium)
8. Ejuke
9. Moses Simon
10.Awoniyi
Extras:
Iheanacho
Dressers
Akpoguma
Those are 25 outfield players with team A and B plus extras. Stop deceiving yourself, and let the best from anywhere in the world represent us without any quota system that is destroying our country.
I would rather take u-20 boys than NPFL.
Let NPFL win CHAN, WAFU, CAF champions league, CAF confederation cups
@Dr Drey
Touchè
The gap between home-based and foreign is increasing every year. It is not even that home-based players are catching up. The training regime in Europe is very professional. Some of our diaspora foreign-based players like Bassey, Aribo, Aina… were in youth academies in Europe from the age of 7 upwards. They are taught all the basics like trapping, passing, and crossing the ball. That’s why the only players in the Super Eagles that can cross the ball are diaspora foreign-based players.
Even when our domestic players are taken to Europe, they have to be taught the basics. It is why they only take youth players whose minds are impressionable and can be easily taught. No matter how good it is rare for a European team to take a mature football player directly from Africa because old dogs cannot be taught new tricks.
The performance of the home-based players against Mexico and Ecuador, on the positive side, showed their enthusiasm and heart, but against Ecuador, we saw bad positioning, ball watching and naivety by Sani Faisal(3), when he allowed an Ecuadoran to ghost past him and score.
In fact, the story of the Ecuador match is that we lost because of a home-based player. I was one of those who praised Ishaq Kayode after his performance but this was only for his enthusiasm and positivity going forward. In reality, he couldn’t cross, his singular shot at goal was speculative and his final ball was abysmal. He even fell over the ball after being played a through pass.
Nigerian home-based players lack knowledge and practice of the football basics that are taught to teenagers in Europe.
Look at someone like Bassey, he’s actually a Leicester academy reject that is better with the football basics than super eagles veteran Moses Simon let alone some home-based player who has never left Nigeria. European football academies like the Anderlecht, Bayern Munich and Ajax academies are churning out diaspora African players at an increasing rate, such that it is even their rejects – no offense to Bassey, that are improving African football.
How did Cape Verde come to be challenging Nigeria or Comoros defeating Ghana? The answer is their access to diaspora players trained at European academies. While the Europeans get the best academy talents like Lukaku, Bukayo Sako and others. Among their rejects are diamonds in the rough like Calvin Bassey.
Sierra Leone whom Nigeria play next will field 20 foreign-based players in a squad of 25. Their home-based players include two goalkeepers because they can’t find foreign-based goal keepers.
Right now we should only try out home-based players during friendlies mainly to encourage them.
@Tristan
Doffing my hat.
Profoudly articulated.
Took these words out of my mouth.
Truth doesn’t care about emotions.
Fix the system. Fix the league. Kill corruption. Then we might just get it right..
Epic…!
That’s all I can say in reverence of your comment.
Sometimes I just imagine what we would have done if it were our CHAN team that has won back to back CHANs and our clubs won an African cup each year for the last 5 years like morrocco… LMAOO.
I bet there would be shout for an embargo on foreign based players in our national teams even if an entire FIFPro XI were Nigerians….. LMAOooo.
We will not only call HB players supertalents, we will call them gods of soccer
In my view, majority of the homebased players did not do well in the recent exhibition matches, though they were not given a lot of minutes. But one of them, Isaq Rafiu Kayode did do well in the limited minutes he was given in the first match. Surprisingly, his name was missing on the new list. Unless he was injured, he showed enough in his cameo to merit inclusion on this new list. I will select him over Emmanuel Dennis whose attitude and body-language is a turn-off. The home-based players may not be as experienced as those playing in Europe but they seem to have something that some our Europe-based players seem to lack most times, that is, hunger and desire. I know Mr. Eguavoen has been disparaged and ridiculed for our World Cup elimination by Ghana. Granted, he isn’t a good coach, but the real culprits were the players. In my considered opinion, Ghana only got the ticket because their players wanted it more. Isaq Rafiu Kayode should have been included on this latest list based on eye-test.
@Tony… You echo my views. I am not calling for a complete overhaul of Super Eagles foreign based… Ww are saying if you want to field homebased pick those who are the best across the NPFL. We saw Ishaq, we saw Faisal and Mboama… are they the best in their position across all NPFL teams? We watched U-20 recently, can we say that number 11 who lobbed the Benin republic goal keeper in the final and the MVP Daniel Daga can’t play in the Super Eagles? Those have ball sense more than some of the foreign based that I have seen recently in Super Eagles… those are homebased too, what they need is platform and exposure. The super Eagles is no training camp but Ekong keeps turning up on sqaud list yet failing often when called to test… I will even play an Anaya Iwuala to Dennis who does not even fit international soccer from his under par showing so far…
Hmm…from the list, I saw Chukwueze, I saw Simon, I saw lookman , I saw Sadiq, I saw Dennis, Osimhen and Dessers then Moffi. Pls ..why calling one Ishiak and Mbaoma again?
We’ll be playing against Ghana soon at CHAN level..let them go and show us what they can do.
Let Kayode crawl before running. Let him gain experience with CHAN. He is not on the invited list because he is not better than those invited.
@JimmyBall, I agree with you. A couple of those U-20 players could be fast-tracked to our CHAN team and ultimately to our main national team. As bad as our league is, I believe there are still some very talented players locally. They bring with them determination and drive. It would be wrong not to fish them out just because, they are home-based. We have all seen our supposedly top foreign based professionals lay two big fat eggs within a space of three months.
A Nigerian shirt must be handed to deserving athletes who earn it, irrespective of where they play their football. The league at home must be improved to come up to the international standard of places like Egypt, Morocco, South Africa and Tunisia. I wonder why Peter Rufai has still not done anything for the NPFL goalkeepers all these years. He dies not appear to wstch the NPFL games.