Nigeria’s former captain Sunday Oliseh is not ruling out helping the country’s football, noting that he will always be available to offer his services to grow the game in the West African country.
The 46-year-old resigned as Super Eagles coach in 2016 after a fallout with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), vowing not to manage the team again under his previous working conditions.
But on Sunday, Oliseh who played for Dutch side Ajax between 1997 and 1999, admitted that he would not hesitate to take another stint with Nigerian football.
“My country is my country, nobody can take it from me. You can make any comment you want to make, but I am first [a] Nigerian before anything else,” the 1996 Olympic gold medalist said while featuring on Channels Sports. “So, if my country really needs me to help out and they ask me to come and do it, I will do it.”
Oliseh a former coach of Dutch club Fortuna Sittard had in the wake of his departure as the Super Eagles coach accused the football federation of treating foreign coaches better than their local counterparts.
Oliseh won the 1994 AFCON with Nigeria.
The Delta-born is doubling down on his stance, insisting that he will only offer his expertise to help Nigerian football when the right conditions are in place.
“But I will not do it if I am giving the best of my knowledge for my country to work and somebody is just taking it ‘yes or no’ and then eventually we all fail,” Oliseh, a 1994 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner, explained.
Earlier in the year, the three-time World Cup participant refuted claims that he left the Nigerian coaching job because of voodoo, accusing the NFF of not supporting him when he was ill.
“I resigned from the Super Eagles because I had decided that when I was sick, I was going to stop because I did not get any help from the federation,” he noted, explaining that he brought fresh legs into the team.
He said players like Wilfred Ndidi, Kelechi Iheanacho, Alex Iwobi, and others whom he called up to the national side were already playing “wonderful football, possession football, aggressive football, pressing football.”
