By Akeem Lawal
Team Manager of Niger Tornadoes, Usman Alfa says playing
good football and finishing in better position will be most important target
for the team in the Nigeria Professional Football League.
The Ikoh Allah
who finished 11th last season kicked off their campaign on a brighter note by
beating Kwara United 2-0 away in Ilorin.
In this a chat with Sportsbiz247.blogspot.com after the
match, Usman who gave credits to former Technical Adviser of the club, Abubakar
Bala for the victory, also revealed the plans and ambitions of the new board
amongst other issues.
Excerpts:
There
have been changes in the management of the club barely a week to Kwara United
game and you had a fantastic result in Ilorin, can you talk us through how you
we able to achieve this result?
The preparation has been on for quite a long time now. We
actually went for pre-aeason started with going to Kontagora, from there, we
came back and then went to Ilorin, briefly to Kaduna, then to Kano. The magic
we must give kudos to the former technical adviser, Abubakar Bala who has
assembled a team like this. Unfortunately he is not here, somebody is here now
and the person is taking charge. He has made some few technical changes that
will suit his style and the boys today were so free. You saw what happened at
the stadium, it could have been up to six goals.
It’s
a new season and this team has set a benchmark, what are your expectations for
this season?
It is always good to start well, but seriously, we were
not actually expecting that it is going to be this massive. And when you start
like this, then you know that you’ve got a lot of work to do because all eyes
will be on you. You shouldn’t give people the opportunity to make it look like
it is a fluke. Se we’ve got a lot of work to do. There are lots of advantages
to it and lots of disadvantages because everybody will be coming with full
force, 110 percent because they want to make sure they win. You have also got a
lot of psychological management to do to the players too for them to know that
they should not allow the victory to get into their heads.
This is the time for them to stay humble, work harder and
continue like this. We are not really setting anything, now we’ve won the first
match, we are going to win the league, no. That is not our style and that is
not my style personally. We are thinking of how to play good football, finish
well. We finished 11th last season, we should be looking at getting a
continental ticket. If that is not possible, there should be an improvement and
we can go back and tell our people, we finished 11th last season, this year we
are finishing like 4th or 5th and we take it off from there.
You
gave credit to former coach for assembling these young talents, changes affect them?
Most of these guys are young and I believe they know what
they want. Changing of coaches is not new, they hire and fire. If you are a
young man that wants to come and play football, the first thing you do is,
‘anybody can get to play for that team, but for you to remain in that team is
left for you to perform. Another challenging thing that the new guys have to
deal with is that this new coach (Erasmus Onuh) did not recruit you, the person the recruited
you is no more here, you need to show that you are going to be loyal. Any type
of laziness, the new coach might think you don’t want to work with him. So
everybody is going to put up the best so as to get a good impression from the
coach.
What
will you consider as an ideal season for you?
My brother, an ideal season for me is that I want to see
a good team playing good football, a confident team, finishing in a very good
position and having clubs coming to ask for our players. This is business, if
our government is spending maybe like N200 million this season, at the end of
the season, if we are able to sell like five players and make another N100
million. We should be able to go to the governor and tell him you gave us N200
million and we sell some players and we are able to bringing back N100 million
for you. That we are using the N100m to buy better players too. It’s not that
we want to hold on to a player for ever. This government is spending money,
what are we bringing back?
We should not be recycling .You buy something for N1.1
million and you are selling it for N3 million, that is profit. That is going to
be my style as team management of this club. I don’t want us to be stagnant; we
want to revolve this team. You sell, you get profit, you buy, that is my focus.
We want to see that we play good football and we see companies coming to
partner us. Sponsoring out oversea trip and stuffs like that.
Most
teams got players on loan, is it different at your club?
Some of them are our properties. As I am talking to you,
I’ve been the Team Manager from the last board but the recruitment was not done
by us, it was the former coach and former chairman that did that which was
okay. I don’t have a problem with that. I have to start looking at the players
right now to know those that we are supposed to go for outrightly. We now have
to review the contract terms of some of them. For example, an academy player
coming for a loan of N1.5 million, whereas we can actually buy him off
completely at N1 million. Those are the kind of things we are going to sit down
with these players, their agents and see the ones we are going for completely
and those we know that due to age not on their side, we don’t have to buy such
player outrightly, he should just be on loan.
That is how it is done and we will now start to put all
these into practice. If a younger player like 19 year old is doing well, those
are the players you buy out rightly from the academy because you know in the
next two years he is going to be massive and you sell and make profit.
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