John Mikel Obi, the Super Eagles of Nigeria and Chelsea legend, has spoken up about former Nigerian coach, Sunday Oliseh.
Obi spoke about his terrible experience with Sunday Oliseh as national team coach, blasting the former coach as “the worst manager ever”.
Obi bared his mind during Episode 3 of his ObiOne podcast tagged “Taking the Mikel: Sunday Oliseh, look away now!”
The AFCON 2013 winner disclosed that Oliseh confronted team leaders on the first day of camp.
He added that the former Borussia Dortmund midfielder’s divisive approach led to Vincent Enyeama leaving the team.
“I remember the first day he came into the camp. Then, we reported to the camp for International duties, he came straight at me and Vincent Enyeama, the goalkeeper, who also was very powerful back then. He came straight at us and Elderson Echiejile, and he said a few things. He said he heard there was a lot of player power with us. Then Enyeama was like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Where are you getting all of these from? We are a nice group, and you just come in, and the first thing is to attack us?
“He was like ‘I heard about you guys.’ And then Enyeama stood up and told him he couldn’t say that because we had been here for so many years. They started arguing, and literally, they were going to have a fight. He took Enyeama out of the team, and he came at us saying he was going to take us out of the team. He said he was going to take us out of the team; he said he was going to make sure we didn’t play anymore.
“Enyeama could not take it, and despite my pleas, he left the camp angrily and never came back.”
The retired midfielder further added that Oliseh, now 49 years old and without a club, was clueless as a coach that blamed voodoo for his failure.
“He (Oliseh) had absolutely no clue of how a manager is,” Obi started. “He was a fantastic guy in his playing days, but as a coach, he was very terrible. He absolutely had no clue of what he was doing. The players never understood anything he was doing, and he did not know what he was doing. He was just confused because he just came in and destroyed the team togetherness.
“His excuse when he got fired was that the people and FA did voodoo on him not to succeed. He was easily the worst manager I played under. He was so bitter with everybody, jealous with everybody, and had no respect for speaking to anybody, whether the physio or anybody.”
Oliseh spent only eight months as Super Eagles manager between 2015 and 2016, and was recently a part of the FIFA technical committee to the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.