As Nigeria strolled into the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations on Monday evening after routed Mozambique in Fez, the sudden strong expression of Oshinmen emotion during match has been described by a football psychologist, Kehinde Adeyemi as an outburst that has psychological impetus to motivate his team mates and also psyche out the opponents.
Reacting after the match, Adeyemi, the only English FA trained football psychologist in the country who doubles as the Director of Sports at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State differs from most people that are criticizing the Galatasaray’s striker.
“As a football psychologist, I have listened to people’s comments and read several postings on social media about his outbursts during the match. Let me first say this, A player with a combination of determination, resilience, brilliance, and patriotism like Oshinmen cannot be said to be working against his team or team mates as the case may be,” Adeyemi noted.
He added that the reason why many people tagged his outburst on the field of play negative was just because he was not wearing the Captain’s band, if he were to be the captain during the match, some of his critics would not have blamed him for the outburst considering the fact that we have always concede late goals in the previous AFCON matches.
“Give me Oshinmen, and I will manage him very well. It’s the duty of a psychologist to manage a player like Oshinmen is to channel his outburst in a better way especially when he is not wearing the captain’s band. Let me tell you that some intelligent players while on the field may even see the game better than the coach and may decide to make an outburst just like any coach would do to change the game,” said the Football Psychologist.
He explained further that If not all, most coaches make outbursts one way or the other to control the game to their advantage.
“A dedicated player like Oshinmen can therefore be well managed on the field of play whether he’s wearing captain’s band or not by a seasoned football psychologist In a way that will make his outburst constructive and not destructive.”
