Siasia


The Dream Team VI gaffer hopes the duo is available for the Olympics qualifiers in Senegal while expecting his side to face Brazil U23 in a friendly encounter.

Nigeria U23 handler Samson Siasia has revealed he would love to have Manchester City’s Kelechi Iheanacho and Liverpool’s signing Taiwo Awoniyi in his team for the 2015 African U23 Championship billed for Senegal.

Both players missed out of the All African Games where the country picked the bronze medal after their clubsides held on to them because the competition was not on FIFA calendar.

According to the former Super Eagles forward, having them in his squad would strengthen the squad as they aim to pick one of the tickets to represent Africa at the 2016 Olympic Games, while planning a warm up game against the Brazil U23 team before heading for the competition.                    

“We hope to play strong football playing nations like Brazil and any other country before we jet out for the African tournament in Senegal. This will prepare us well for the task ahead in Senegal,” Siasia said.

 “If we can get the likes of (Kelechi) Iheanacho, (Taiwo) Awoniyi it would be great for the team. I have been talking to the two players to see if they can be a part of this team.

“Hopefully their clubs would release them. To get the clubs to release them is the only problem we have, otherwise we will stick with the ones we have and start working on improving our goal scoring abilities. If we start changing too many players now it’s going to destroy the whole team,” he continued.                                                   
“We will go on a week recess and let’s say by the end of this month or first week in October we will come back to camp to start preparations for the African Championship in Senegal. I think that will give us 14 days trainings before the game. 

“We will try to see anybody we can see but we don’t want to make too many changes because that would kill the team. We need to just learn from our mistakes and make sure that it won’t repeat itself in Senegal.

“We didn’t play that bad in Congo Brazzaville in the just concluded All Africa Games. Our problem is scoring goals and we will keep working on that, he concluded.

Nigeria will face Mali, Algeria and Egypt in the African U23 competition billed to hold in Senegal later this year.