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By Ebenezer Bajela.
Nigeria international Alex Iwobi has lamented the bumpy pitches the Super Eagles play on during home games, saying it has negatively affected the team, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
Jose Peseiro boasts a star-studded squad with an average age of 25 years, and despite having Napoli’s Victor Osimhen, Samuel Chukwueze, Moses Simon, Joe Aribo, Wilfred Ndidi among other stars in their ranks, the Eagles failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and were also beaten by lowly Guinea-Bissau at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja last Friday in one of their Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
The 26-year-old, however, blamed poor pitches for the team’s poor performances on home soil.
“We don’t know if we are going to have a nice pitch to play,” he said in an interview with The Beautiful Game podcast.
“Obviously, we got a new coach and we played Sierra Leone and we beat them 2-1 in a very difficult game, then we played Sao Tome and Principe and beat them 10-0 because we played on a great pitch. A lot of us play in Europe now and we play on great pitches where it is easy to manipulate the ball around and play freely. If we had that in Nigeria it will be difficult to beat us and I am confident to say that not many teams can beat us.
“To start with, we don’t have a good pitch because if we have that I feel like we will be unstoppable. That is one thing about Nigeria and I don’t know what’s going on behind but we could play in Asaba, we could play in Lagos or Abuja. We understand that everyone wants to see the Eagles play and Nigeria is a very big nation but at the same time, it will just be nice to have just one base where we know how it is going to be, the hotel we are going to stay and the food we eat. It just makes everything easier.”
The Everton midfielder added that they were still a young side and needed to learn.
“Our team is still young and we still have a lot to learn and even as a team we are still learning about ourselves,” he added.
“One thing I can promise Nigerian fans is that as much as the talent is still there only God knows where we will be in the next few years and they just need to be patient with us because we are trying.”