BY SAB OSUJI

George Finidi, a former Nigeria international and current Technical Adviser of Enyimba of Aba, has sensationally opened up on what he says cost the People's Elephant progression in both the 2023 CAF Champions League and the inaugural African Football League, AFL.

Finidi spoke to selected sports journalists on the team's return from Morocco where they were battered and bundled out of the AFL by Wydad Athletic Casablanca 3-0 in the reverse fixture of the AFL Quarter finals, going through on a 4-0 aggregate having also won the first leg 1-0 in Uyo four days earlier.

Finidi stressed that certain things weren't done by officials of Enyimba, adding that the team's recruitment prior to the start of the 2023/2024 season was everything short of being professional, stressing the coaching staff were left in the dark as regards the in coming players to bolster the squad.

"After the first leg, (match against Wydad AC), they dropped some players from travelling for the second leg in Casablanca, claiming that they couldn’t get them visas", starts an obviously embittered George. 

"We had to protest it strongly before it was rectified. We later found out that there was more to it.

“Can you imagine that we went for such a game without the goalkeeping and fitness coaches? Myself and Yema were the only coaches that travelled for that game. That is very strange to me".

Enyimba honoured the crucial away fixture on an Air Peace chattered flight courtesy of Abia State Government.

“Everyone has to put the interest of the club first because until this is done, we would only be joking", Finidi cautioned as he tried to blame key officials of the club for the club's epileptic run so far.

“We arrived Uyo on October 17 (for the first leg of the AFL Quarter final match against Wydad Athletic Club) with the idea to have as many training sessions as possible on the grass pitch in Uyo since we are more used to our synthetic pitch. 

"But we couldn’t really achieve that because the management failed to make the right arrangements with the stadium authorities. As a result, we improvised and had one of our training sessions at a primary school, while another training session was cut short because of the same poor arrangements.

“In fact, we played a team that was more used to the playing surface than us, the home team. It was obvious that we were at a disadvantage as a team used to artificial pitches and this really affected us. 

“Also, we had only three training sessions with the AFL match ball, meanwhile, our opponents had enough time to get used to it. That was why you could see my players struggling with their control, passing and shooting.

“It is sad to see such statements being released when all hands should be on deck and things should be more organized to enable a positive environment for all. Yes, there have been issues, but I remained patient because I believed that we could harmonise efforts and work things out; but here we are.

“The issue with the team is obvious, and it has nothing to do with the coaches. The same coaches won the league with less goals conceded and highest goal scored. We won the best Super 6 ever organized, scored the highest and conceded the least number of goals,

“Out of 19 new players that were brought in, I had knowledge of only 4 of them. When I saw the quality of the players that were brought, I called (Ifeanyi) Ekwueme, the Sporting Director and asked what the target for the season is. He said it is just to stabilize in the league as the focus is to settle down first.

“Ideally, before registering players for any competition, the coaches must be consulted to submit the list. But that wasn’t the case here. For whatever flimsy reason, we were not consulted and they did the registration themselves. As a result, some of the players we would have needed were not registered. It was much later that the Sporting Director just sent us the list of players that they had already registered".