Super Eagles Chief Coach, Sunday Oliseh yesterday
explained why he left out Chelsea of England midfielder,
John Mikel Obi from his list of players invited for the
forthcoming 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifier
against Tanzania. Oliseh who revealed this at a media
parley in Abuja said he made several phone calls including
text messages to Obi’s number but he never responded to
any.
The former international who reluctantly spoke about the
issue of Obi revealed that he has no bias against anybody
adding that under him, the national team will not favour or
malign any Nigerian player.
“Well this issue is an enigma and we have been trying to
understand it but I am in the dark personally, and with my
assistants we spent time about 11 days in and around
Europe talking to players, watching games. We contacted
each of the players, call them up, call the clubs and
eventually met with the players.
“I went to England on a Thursday and Chelsea was just
coming back, we had fixed our visit to coincide with the end
of their tour before they played Arsenal. I contacted Obi
Mikel, called him on phone four times, the phone kept on
ringing nobody picked it up, I sent him an SMS and got no
response. But I called Victor Moses the phone rang three
times and he picked it up and I spoke with him, told him to
concentrate on his game.
After the game he came to my hotel is and we met and I told him my plans for the national team. I left to Liverpool to meet the
other player and I spent about six hours to go there and
back but there was no response from Mikel until I returned
here.
I think it was yesterday (Wednesday) that I saw a missed
call, so at the moment I don’t know what the situation is.
For me everybody is the same and will be treated the
same.”
He also gave words of encouragement to the home based
players by stating that any of them that proves his worth
will be given the opportunity to play, if they were better than
their foreign based compatriots.
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