{"id":4342,"date":"2023-11-28T10:03:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T10:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/ex-nigerian-international-ekpo-reveals-super-eagles-need-home-based-players-not-peseiros-sack\/"},"modified":"2023-11-28T10:03:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T10:03:19","slug":"ex-nigerian-international-ekpo-reveals-super-eagles-need-home-based-players-not-peseiros-sack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/ex-nigerian-international-ekpo-reveals-super-eagles-need-home-based-players-not-peseiros-sack\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Nigerian international Ekpo reveals Super Eagles need home-based players, not Peseiro\u2019s sack"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Former Nigerian international, Friday Ekpo, on Tuesday, said sacking Super Eagles head coach, Jos\u00e9 Peseiro, is not as crucial as adding fresh home-based and foreign professionals to key departments of the team.<\/p>\n<p>Ekpo said this in an interview with NAN in Lagos against the backdrop of Super Eagles\u2019 unimpressive performance in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Recall that Super Eagles drew 1-1 in Uyo on matchday one against Lesotho, a team that has never qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).<\/p>\n<p>A few days later, Peseiro\u2019s men were held to another 1-1 draw against Zimbabwe in Rwanda to bag only two points from their first two games.<\/p>\n<p>Peseiro has been under immense criticism after guiding the Super Eagles to two disappointing results in November.<\/p>\n<p>However, Ekpo has now appealed to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) not to heed the call by football enthusiasts to sack the Portuguese.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not calling for Jose\u2019s head like most people are; sacking him will be counterproductive at this point in time. These results can be reversed in subsequent matches.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy only concern is that we should not have only foreign-based players in the team because selecting his team for matches will be tough.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo foreign based player would like to leave their clubs just for them to come and sit on the bench, we have done it in the past and it worked, we can do that again,\u201d Ekpo said.<\/p>\n<p>Ex-Nigerian international Ekpo reveals Super Eagles need home-based players, not Peseiro\u2019s sack<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Nigerian international, Friday Ekpo, on Tuesday, said sacking Super Eagles head coach, Jos\u00e9 Peseiro, is not as crucial as&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4343,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5585,15,1558,160,869],"tags":[873,3155,180,1562,201,870],"class_list":["post-4342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ekpo","category-news","category-peseiro","category-sport","category-super-eagles","tag-eagles","tag-ekpo","tag-news","tag-peseiro","tag-sport","tag-super"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}