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- We don’t have money issues
- Or goalkeeper is calm
- We have a young team that wants to impress
- Russia is like home for us may be because I have a Russian girlfriend
- Not possible to win always
- We are ready to go
Captain of the Super Eagles of Nigeria, John Obi Mikel has expressed the team’s readiness for today’s match against Croatia at the ongoing Russia 2018 World Cup. He told Brilla FM Friday evening his team wants to win more than the fans wants but not always possible.
According to him, the players are in high spirits. “The team is full of energy. The players are happy, they want to prove themselves and they are full of energy. We have been playing for a year or a year and half. Hopefully, we can achieve a lot of things in this tournament,” he said.
The skipper of the team who has a Russian wife said the Russian people have been good to them since the team arrived at the host nation. “Everybody is doing well in the camp and it has been amazing, the Russians have been nice to us, they have been supportive, I don’t know why. May be because my girlfriend is Russian. This is very good for the players. It is like home to us and it is good for the young team.”
About the team’s first opponent, Mikel said he doesn’t want to speak about the Croats but wants to focus on the Super Eagles. “I don’t want to speak about Croatian match, it is good we focus on our team. We have to play and its going to be an interesting game. We have a good team and younger team, may be its going to work for us, who knows.”
Talking about the Nigerian goalkeeper, the captain is full of hope that the young goalkeeper is calm and ready for the tournament. “We have a young goalkeeper but he is very calm no matter what pressure he comes under. We try to help him as much as possible. I speak to him a lot, he needs someone to always talk to him but it is also important for us to allow him concentrate because he knows what he’s doing, we don’t want to confuse him but we try to get him as calm as possible. We don’t have problem with our goal keeping situation.”
About the lost friendly games, Obi said, “We lost a few games and the tournament is starting. We have to do our best if we do exactly what we know to do. We have to control the game. We know to be aggressive if we do all these we have a great chance. It’s a young team a lot of them were not at the last world cup and it is good for us, they want to prove themselves. It is important for us and it is important for us to keep our emotion.
“We have to know you don’t win all the time. There is winner and loser at the end of the game, this is our job we love to do our job. We love to win even more than the fans want us to win so for us it is important to win every game but it is not possible, we know Nigerians know that the mid field is important in every game and we believe with the power we have in the midfield we might be able to control the midfield. It depends on who has the control of the ball,” he said.
The captain also said there is no problem in the camp and money issue is well sorted. “We don’t have any problem about money, everything is sorted. There is no issue in the camp, the boys are happy and ready to go.”
