Personal interest guided Keshi’s players’ selection — NFF

A member of the Nigeria Football
Federation disclosed more reasons
why coach Stephen Keshi’s
contract was not renewed by the
federation.
The official who is part of Nigeria’s
delegation to the ongoing African
Women Championship in Namibia,
alleged that some of the players
Keshi invited to the national team,
were those he had personal
interest in.
“We found out that some of the
players he invited were those under
managers close to him.
“He was taking risk by not inviting
players on merit. This was not very
good for our football
“He did not have the interest of
the nation at heart. This is one of
the reasons the NFF had no option
than to let him go.” said the NFF
member here in Windhoek.
Last Thursday the NFF decided
against renewing Keshi’s contract,
which expired after the World Cup.
After he won the Nations Cup for
Nigeria and took the country to a
second round finish for the first
time in 20 years, Keshi’s interest
on the job seem to have waned, he
was called upon by the Sports
minister, Tammy Danango to fill
the gap for the Nations Cup
qualifiers, but that seem to have
worked against the country as
Keshi, despite the fact that team
continued to struggle, left out
some players who many Nigerian
fans believed could have helped
the team’s qualification campaign.
“Nigerians were clearly not happy
with his decision to shut out some
players. His excuses were
untenable. But because we didn’t
want to interfere, we let him carry
on and now we are back on a
familiar trend of basing our
possible qualification on
permutations.”
He said a player like Kelechi
Iheancho was too young to play
for the Eagles. When it was
obvious the Eagles lacked a
creative midfielder. But how old
was Keshi when he was invited to
the national team. These are some
of the things we could not come to
terms with,” said the NFF member.