Football failures: Keshi blames anxiety

Super Eagles coach, Stephen Keshi, says Nigeria’s recent football failures has heaped a lot of anxiety on the national team setup that needs time to clear off.

Speaking Wednesday at the team’s camp in Bolton White Apartments, Abuja, during an interactive session with the media,  Keshi agreed that the team should have scored a basketful of goals against Namibia, last Sunday in Calabar, but because of the anxiety on the part of players, pressure from the fans and the desperation to correct the mistakes of the past.

“The team and particularly the strikers are under tremendous pressure to deliver and that is why they make mistakes in front of goal and in the process it comes out to hunt them. We must be patient with the team and the strikers and very soon the goals will start rolling in aplenty” But are Nigerians ready to be patient?. That is the big question”.

Like all Nigerians, the former Mali and Togo national coach, commended Calabar fans for standing by the team last Sunday, even when the goals refused to come early. “Gradually, we will overcome the poor scoring credentials of the team, because what we are doing at the moment is building a new team in the midst of crucial qualifiers, which is very difficult to do.

In the meantime, team psychologist, Dr Robinson Okosun, has been working on the team’s presence of mind as the crucial game against Malawi in Blantyre, on Saturday draws near. Okosun said he has been taking on the players one by one to correct observable lapses, that come purely from the mind and also help boost the level of confidence of the entire team. “But Keshi has made the job easier for me because you can see each time he talks to the players that he is also a great psychologist”.