Sports247 sat down with Gbagada FC Coach for a chat after the team’s game in preparation for their TCC League game. The coach talked about the national team coaches and the progress of our teams.
Quizzed about the performances of our national teams, Coach Akinyelu commended the job done so far by the coaches and stated that bad planning rather than coaching is the major problem with the youth teams in Nigeria.
“For the national teams, I believe the coaches in charge have been doing a good job, they have the best legs and in my honest opinion, they’ve been fair with their selections. If you’re good enough I believe you will get scouted,” he said.
He shifted attention to the youth grade teams after a number of poor performances and failure to qualify for some competitions. He explained that the problem was with the system and not the players and coaches.
“For the U17/U20 teams, I feel we don’t have a good enough structure for coaches to work with. There are no standard U17 and U20 leagues for them to scout from so they make do with what they see when it’s time for them to select players and to do that in few weeks before the tournament is not the best. So we not doing well in those competitions is due to poor planning not necessarily bad coaches or bad players,” he explained.
