Plateau United coach, Fidelis Ilechukwu, has admitted that his players have issues with their confidence and need a psychologist to help them ahead of the return leg of the CAF Confederation Cup playoff clash with Al Akdar of Libya. In a chat with Trust Sports after his team’s convincing 4-1 win over the Libyans on Wednesday in Abuja, the coach popularly called the ‘working one’ spoke on Plateau United’s chances in the continent and concluded that the return fixture against Al Akdar isn’t going to be a stroll in the park.
Against Al Akdar, your players started strongly but appeared to have lost steam as the match progressed. Was it due to fatigue?
I think the problem of the team is not lack of rest as we didn’t train on Monday. It was a full day of rest. But since we came to Abuja, we didn’t have a place to really train as much as we wanted. We don’t want to complain so that people will not misunderstand us. And the pitch here is not too good. On Monday and Tuesday, we did a walk out. What I saw was a team under pressure to score goals.
Next week, you will be in Libya for the second leg, what should Nigerians be expecting?
In football, anything is possible. We have studied our opponents. They are a scoring team as well. It is a team that has fast players. It won’t be easy and there is no need to deceive ourselves. I am not saying we will play attacking football in Libya or play a defensive game but what we shall do is to take the game as it comes.
Like against Esperance, we wanted to play attacking football but the referees’ decisions made us park the bus which we did. My team also loves to score goals too. Our opponents are very good at home and they rotate their players a lot. They have an astro turf and this is what we are used to as well. We will not have a problem with that. What we need to just do is to be mentally okay. I don’t want to say we didn’t have enough training. I am a coach.
We will be going back to the drawing board to ensure we work on all departments because we know they are going to come out and be very aggressive in their approach to the second leg.
You could see from the way they played in the first half that their plan was to sit back and defend against us in the first leg and finish things off in Libya.
However, it was because we scored those two first half goals that they decided to come out to play. Fortunately for us, we won the first leg with an impressive goal margin, which is the most important thing and that is what we wanted.
A major aspect of your game was the long throw-ins from Daniel Itodo. Was that part of tactics?
We scored with Itodo’s efforts and it is possible I rest him in the next game which is an away match. We have a very good left back, Mustapha, who is very fast but we always use Itodo because his presence on the pitch brings fear to the opponents.
We know he is very good at those long throw-ins and we take advantage of that. He may be deficient in the defence and that is why we need a good defensive player to protect him whenever he surges forward. This is what a coach will do which is to cover up the lapses.
I don’t think any particular player in this squad can dictate the fortunes of the entire team. There are always players whose names are likely to show up on the score-sheet, even as substitutes in a match, and it is good that they are capable of that because this team thrives on the basis of a collective effort.
You have played against two North African opponents, Esperance and now Al Akdar. How would you rate the two teams?
We had very good matches against Esperance here in Nigeria and in Tunisia. The matches were far better than today’s (Wednesday) match against Al Akdar. If we played the way we did against Esperance, we would have scored about eight goals. Our problem has to do with our mentality. We need to have a psychologist to help motivate the players. I noticed that after the first half, the goals didn’t come and football is about mentality. I discovered that they weren’t happy and I had to step in to ensure they were in the right frame of mind. And we had more goals for us to win 4-1.
Are you satisfied with the scoring ability of your players?
I am happy that we are scoring at this rate because what it does is that it gratifies the type of football we are trying to showcase. Our style is a beautiful blend of both possession and an offensive style of football and that’s what we managed to do on Wednesday. We also thrive on urgency in the final third. But it’s not just only about attacking, it’s also about our ability to control the midfield as well.
How bright are Plateau United’s chances in the Confederation Cup?
I think, with the team scoring goals at this rate, it shows that things are working and we have taken some vital lessons away from our brief stint in the CAF Champions League. We are indeed a team capable of achieving something great in this competition.
What are your final words to Nigerians who are eager to see the country do well in the continent?
We want the fans to witness a vibrant brand of football. We want them to be emotionally charged and enjoy a beautiful brand of football. I think a good game of football is good for everyone and we hope that the fans will always return home excited after enjoying 90 minutes of football.
