Midfielder Ikenna Hillary-Paul has urged Coaches at the different levels of Nigerian national teams to emulate coach Stephen Keshi in the area of scouting and breeding players from the local league.
Ikenna said Keshi had a huge influence on Nigerian football as a Coach mainly because of his work with home based players.
Keshi died four years ago after leaving the Super Eagles job, where he had won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013.
In a chat with footballlive, Hillary said not many coaches have had the level of trust Keshi had for Nigerian league players, who proved to be worthy of their selection at the national team.
He insists that will continually be a reference point in Keshi’s honour having also achieved considerable level of success doing so.
“As it is this moment, nobody stands for the home based any more. Everyone keeps complaining that the league is poor, the quality and the technique is poor but there are individual players that have this technique. Keshi has been an inspiration to me, he was the one that gave me the chance in the national team when nobody else wanted to and took me to South Africa to represent Nigeria. He didn’t take us like most Nigerian coaches will do.”
