Iran, Bosnia: My fears for eagles – Rufai

newtelegraphonline.com, Charles Ogundiya – A former Super Eagles goalkeeper, Peter Rufai, on Wednesday shocked our correspondent when he stated that his fears at the forthcoming World Cup lies with the outcome of Nigeria’s games with Iran and Bosnia Herzegovina. Rufai argued that the two teams have nothing to lose and could play the spoilers role for any of the favourite teams in the group. He stressed that Nigeria and Argentina were favourites to qualify but anything can happen in football.

“I fear those two teams just because we do not know them well enough and our moving ahead lies largely in the outcome of our games against them. “Again, for any teams to qualify for the World Cup, it means the team is the best from its Confederat i o n ; Argentina is our last game in the group, but if we think we can overrun Iran and Bosnia, believing Argentina alone is our problem, then we are missing the point.

“The boys should take the game against Iran and Bosnia as the World Cup final itself, if we can do that, Nigeria will go far in Brazil,” he said. On the payment of Super Eagles technical crew’s salary till June, Rufai commended the NFF and hope it would spur the team to achieve results.

“It is a good development paying the salaries of the technical crew till the end of June; the federation has also planned some friendly matches for the team towards the World Cup. These are all good initiatives,” Rufai said. He also said that the experience of the technical crew will be an added advantage to the team. “Looking at the Super Eagles technical crew, we have Stephen Keshi as the head of the technical crew and other members of the team have been part of a particular team or another in the past.

“ Keshi was also head of Togo and Mali in the past, he has proven what he can do as coach of the national team, winning the Nations Cup after so many years for Nigeria,” said the former Deportivo La Coruna of Spain goalkeeper. “With all these positives put together, there is no doubt that the Super Eagles will perform well at the World Cup in Brazil.”