Why I took Mutiu Adepoju to 2002 W/Cup - Onigbinde

By Saliu Gbadamosi - 05.05.2008

SIX years after leading the Super Eagles to the Korea/Japan 2002 World Cup, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde has stated that he was sentimental in selecting Mutiu Adepoju among the squad to the mundial.

The FIFA and CAF instructor had been criticised in some quarters on his selection, adding that he did not take the best the country could have offer to the World Cup. Critics had said some players had no business in the Eagles squad then.

But in a no-hold-barred interview Tribunesports last week, Chief Onigbinde said his critics were only being mischievous, submitting that he selected players available after Nigerians had said they did not want certain players in the national team again.

“Anybody who say that was being mischievous because you remember my coming into the Eagles at that time had an origin— the perfomances in Mali and many Nigerians said they didn’t want to see any of these boys anymore. So, how can they now blame me for making alternative selection.

“I received messages, telephone calls, people threatening my life if I allow those boys back. So what did they expect me to have done? Manufacture players?” Onigbinde told Tribunesports. Speaking on the inclusion of Adepoju in the World Cup squad, the former Technical Director of the Trinidad and Tobago acknowledged that the ‘Headmaster’, as Adepoju was fondly called in his playing days, was included both for technical and sentimental reasons, adding that he compensated the player for the gang up against him in the Super Eagles at the time he was to become the captain of the national team.

“The case of Mutiu Adepoju was both technical and sentimental. Sentimental in the sense that Mutiu was pushed out of the national team at the time he was to become captain of the team. So he needed to be compensated somehow.

“But that was not just the main thing. I used Mutiu as a catalyst, you know I had a pack of young boys and I wanted him to be around so that if the young boys were not performing they knew there was someone on the bench who could come in. I think it paid off. So, I had very good reasons to have taken Mutiu along.”

Meanwhile, Onigbinde has advocated open administration on the part of Nigerian football administrators as an alternative for a code of conduct for national team players, insisting that having a code of conduct for players shows ineffective management.

“One thing I hate to hear is people talking about code of conduct in camp, it shows ineffective management. If your management is good, you operate open administration, you don’t need to codify your rules and laws for people to understand. Everybody understands what he supposed to do and he does it,” he submitted.

“You don’t need to regiment everything.If you have nothing to hide, why do you have to sit down and write a code of conduct? All you have to do is get everybody committed with open administration and make sure that everybody’s demand is met as much as possible.”