Oliseh: I’m not afraid of sack… just pay me off

Super Eagles’ coach Sunday Oliseh says he is not under pressure “whatsoever” to win the CAF African Nations Championship currently holding in Rwanda, maintaining that he is not afraid of being sacked as long as his entitlements would be paid.

The Eagles are “a team in progress” and the championship is an opportunity for the players to be exposed, he said.

“Pressure to win the competition? No! We are just building a team and I think it’s a great opportunity for us to give the players the much needed international exposure, and to see how good we are,” he said.

“This is CHAN we qualified for. Every game is important. We can’t start talking about tough challenges or pressure or anything.”

Oliseh reacted to stories and speculations that his job might be on the line if he does not win the competition.

“Let them go ahead. As long as they are ready to pay me the remaining of my three-year contract, I will accept it with pleasure,” he said.

On his long-running battle with the Nigerian media, he said: “Well, I really have nothing to say to them. I am not serving journalists. I am serving Nigeria. Anybody who wants to write is free to write. That I can’t influence. What counts for me is my job. And most journalists never played football before. So, I can understand that they can write without really knowing the depth of it.”

And on the social media, Oliseh said he does not care about negative opinions because “people who say this kind of things are the people who have negative opinions. And that’s how it should be.

“I don’t have time reading comments on social networks. Newspapers sometimes, I read. But to be honest with you, social media comments I don’t think it’s meant for the coach to read. It’s about people sharing opinions among themselves. And that is how it is.”

The 1994 African Cup of Nations winner and gold medallist at 1996 Atlanta Olympics also reacted to the questions of leaving out some key local players from his team.

“If I have to invite everybody that the world wants, I am sure we will have a team of maybe 2,000 players. So, I invited players who qualified the team, players that I believed deserved to be here,” he said.

On the highly anticipated double-header clash for the 2017 African Cup of Nations winner-takes-all clash with Egypt, the Eagles handler insists his priority right now is the CHAN Championship.

“The only thing I can tell Nigerians as of today is that we are concentrating on playing Niger (at CHAN), not on Egypt.