Brown Ideye featured in six of the seven games in Nigeria’s 2013 AFCON campaign, as Stephen Keshi led the Super Eagles to victory against Burkina Faso.
AFCON 2013 winner with the Super Eagles, Brown Ideye, has called Jose Peseiro out after the withdrawal of Sadiq Umar from the AFCON 2023 tournament, Soccernet.ng reports.
Ideye, 35, currently plies his trade with Kuwaiti side, Al-Yarmouk SC, after plying his trade across several top leagues in Europe.
The former West Bromwich Albion striker has been vocal in airing his opinions on the current state of the Super Eagle’s team, and didn’t hold back in voicing his displeasure.
Jose Peseiro included Kelechi Iheanacho, Victor Boniface and Sadiq Umar his 25-man AFCON squadlist. With Iheanacho is yet to return to full fitness after picking up an injury with Leicester City, Umar and Boniface have been pulled out of the squad due to injuries.
The pair have been replaced by Paul Onuachu and Terem Moffi respectively, but Ideye isn’t happy as he feels key players are getting injured, and that might impact the team’s performance in Ivory Coast.
Jose Peseiro opted to pick 25 men, with CAF allowing him the space to have extra two players, but the Portuguese coach refused. Ideye, on his X page, claimed the coach’s decision has come back hunt him.
“We’re just unlucky that we have most of our key players injured, that’s one reason CAF ask teams to submit 27 names because they know things like this can happen. But what did we do? We went with 25, we literally shot our self on the foot,” the former Sochaux man posted.
Ideye has tipped the Super Eagles to qualify from Group A, but has doubts if they can go all the way.
25 players instead of 27: the foolishness of the Nigerian coach and NFF.
Quite unfortunate were we are now and come in to it our firebrigage aproach is killing
How a country of over 200million can get four national teams to represent us its ashame for the so call NFF
For me, thats one of the unnecessary harm we bring to ourselves. It’s arrogant of the coach to not complete the squad from the get go. Any coach thinking right will even invite more than 27, register 27 and keep extra 2 to be training with the team until the competition starts. But in Nigeria, we always do the opposite and hope miracle happens. Let’s jut play our 3 games and come back home. Nigerian football needs overhauling.
we need a very good local coach that understands the team and knows the game for us to soar high . Late Stephen Keshi demonstrated this truth in 2013 when he won AFCON with a bunch of largely unknown players.
After so many years we are still saying the same thing about our football handlers! Who did we offend in this country? Imagine being given the opportunity to have enough players in the squad yet lack of vision made the coach to do otherwise! It’s so unfortunate! How long will we continue like this?