Ebi Egbe, the Chief Executive Officer of Monimichelle Group and a renowned stadium facilities expert has urged Nigerians not to lose faith in the Super Eagles following their scrappy 1-1 draw with Equatorial Guinea in the AFCON 2024 opener in Abidjan on Sunday.
Egbe, whose Monimichele Limited is Nigeria’s leading stadium turf construction company, emphasized the critical role that football adaptation to varying environmental conditions plays in determining a team’s performance in a tournament.
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In a statement, Egbe said, “Nigerians should not give up on the Super Eagles just yet because in football we have to adapt to playing conditions.
The team will perform better as the tournament progresses. We have the best players in Africa today; adaptation to the playing conditions of the pitch will change the story of the Nigerian Super Eagles in the AFCON 2024.
Nigerians will see a better-performing Eagles against the host Nation Cote d’Ivoire.”
“I have said this time without number. The Nigerian Football Federation needs to have a facilities committee with seasoned groundsmen as advance teams to any major tournament.
Technical playing conditions report would have helped our coaches in team formation which might see the need to fuse some of our NPFL players who are doing very well in our local premier league primarily because of the playing condition of the AFCON pitches.”
“It takes continuous training for an elite player who has been trained on a speed football pitch to adapt to the playing conditions of slow ball bounce and roll pitches like 100% natural grass pitches that naturally have slow ball movement.
This is not just a Nigerian problem, all the African teams that are made up of elite players suffer the same fate.”
