Samson Unuanel Insists Sunshine Stars Are Battle Ready For IfeanyiUbah FC

Sunshine Stars coach, Samson Unuanel, has admitted that losing to newly promoted MFM FC at the Agege stadium on Wednesday was painful, but insisted that his side will not over respect the too many Brazilians playing for IfeanyiUbah FC in their next game.

The Dr. Olukoya boys defeated the Akure based side 2-1 on match day 4 of the Nigeria Professional Football League season.

Musa Newman gave the home side the lead in the 26th minute after converting a low drive but Kadir

Samad leveled up for the visiting team just five minutes into half time to restore their chances of going home with a point.

Odey Stephen, who came in as a substitute stunned the Owena boys to clinch all three points in the game, making three wins out of four NPFL games.

“As a coach, I plan to come here and pick a point at least, as God will have it, I don’t have power over what God has written and I conceded that goal very very late. Then it was painful and if you know what’s going through my mind you will pity me, because we’ve worked very hard within these five weeks that we’ve been together, we have really worked on each game as they come but unfortunately, it happens like that, you don’t know what will happen next. But so far so good, I give credit to my players because the match had a slogan; MFM condemned to win because of their last result (3-0 loss to Shooting Stars of Ibadan), we too condemned to win because we needed the victory, and this made the game tougher and a bit difficult. They worked hard for it, let me say they worked harder, hence they were very fortunate, and were able to get that dying minute goal. It’s good; it shows that we still have lots of work to do.”

“I don’t like the way we are positioning these Brazilians in IfeanyiUbah FC, let us project our players let us project ourselves, let them go and bring players from anywhere, we are good enough to have foreigners in our league, and when we have one, he must not be overhyped, because they don’t overhype our players over there. Let them go and bring many Brazilians, we prepare for 38 matches, and we are going to play 38 matches, IfeanyiUbah FC is one of them and we are going to play them.”

Meanwhile, emotional Kadiri Samad of Sunshine said he was disappointed his side failed to pick up a point after toiling for 90 minutes in the game.

“As for me, we all tried our best, but God knows everything all, we conceded a late goal and it is painful. I believed we could get a point from the game but we conceded a late goal.” An emotional Kadiri Samad said during post match conference at Agege stadium on Wednesday

 Unuanel also added “I don’t subscribe to pressure; I am coach that started from the grass roots. Every pressure I have overcome them, I am building and everybody believes we are building a team, a very good one for that matter. What I’m saying is that we have not gotten it right, by the time we get it right, you will know the kind of team we are building. The people at home knows quite alright that we are building a team and they appreciate what we are doing, and if at all there’s pressure, Louis van Gaal has pressure and likewise some other top coaches. The only set of people who aren’t under pressure are the journalists/reporters.”

“We always hear stories of coaches, who are fired, and many will still be fired, and the more you fire them, they gain more experience for their next job. We lost a lot of top team players last season, like Newman here played for Sunshine last season, I don’t know why he left and I’m not interested in such story. I came in to build on what I met on ground, but unfortunately, half of the team left and the funny thing is that many of them did not leave on time, you can imagine Nigerian players, many of them left the very day we wanted to start the league, while CHAN players were given opportunity to go and rest, but never came back which is a counterproductive to what we have planned, so as far as we are concerned, we are not under pressure. I am taking full responsibility for everything that happened, my players played well and I am going to stand by them till thy kingdom come.” Sunshine Stars coach concluded