Salisu Yusuf: Odey, others not good enough for Super Eagles

By Akeem Lawal

CHIEF Coach of the Super Eagles, Salisu Yusuf has ruled out the possibility of any of the Nigeria Professional Football League players of being invited to the senior national team any time soon.

There were criticisms over the exclusion of the NPFL top scorer Stephen Odey from the Eagles squad for the friendly tie against Senegal and the aborted Burkina Faso encounter, but Yusuf, who is also the assistant to Technical Adviser Gernot Rohr, believes the MFM forward, Nigeria league all-time top scorer, Mfon Udoh of Enyimba and other talented NPFL players needed to undergo some process before being considered for the main team.

“We have young players doing well, but for the moment, they can not square up with the main team. At the moment, no player is good enough for the Super Eagles. With home-based players, we need long time for camping to be able to prepare them for the main team. 

Udoh in action for Enyimba

"You need to call them to camp, try to teach them what you want them to play, your philosophy. It is a different ball game because the way they play in the club-side is different from when they play in the national team. How they train in their club-side is different from the national team,” Salisu said on Sports Zone, a Lagos based radio station sports program on Tuesday.

“So for us in the technical crew, we come to camp two to three days to play a game. It is going to be very difficult to bring a player just suddenly from the home based team to play in the Super Eagles within those three days. He must go through a process and the process is the camping. You must camp like for a month with the home based team and they can do something.  

“It’s about quality. You need to compare because we need the best for the country. For instance, the highest goal scorer in the current NPFL season is Stephen Odey. There is Kelechi Iheanacho, Brown Ideye, Odion Ighalo and you have limitation in number as you have to bring in two in each position. Are you going to bring Odey who is scoring but at the same time you need to look at the quality of the league. That is why you see some players who can be playing outside the main Europe and scoring very well, but if you look at the quality of the league compared with the main Europe, it’s not the same. All these factors have to be considered before you invite the players to come,” Salisu said.