Rescuing our leagues from undertakers

Ade Ojeikere

Permit me, dear reader, to bore you with this statement of fact that the domestic league here is dead. This isn’t an attempt to de-market the local game whose growth has been stunted through wrong policies. Rather, one wants the organisers to use this critical period to re-evaluate the league’s operations to be in tandem with the European calendar. Except the domestic league is in sync with what exists in other climes, the few good players in the game here would dump their local clubs for all manner of leagues, with shylock agents dangling foreign currencies and better living conditions to woo them into what turns out most times to be slavish contracts.

Organisers who wait for a player to die on the pitch before considering implementing proper medical facilities at match venues for the players, coaches and staff cannot be relied on to improve the game or produce talents to fill up all our national teams.

Our league organisers should use this period to get all the clubs to clear their debts, with a firm warning not to register any team with outstanding for the new season. It doesn’t matter if only six teams comply with the directive. It leaves room for the eligible ones in the lower cadre to get promoted. This idea of glossing over rules enshrined in the league’s constitution won’t make the game run here as a business, even though state governors use their teams to settle their lackeys.

A domestic league without a regimented calendar can’t produce new stars, since they only know when the season begins without knowing when it would end.  We have in Nigeria, a league season without end, hence such contraptions as abridged leagues or a regional league competition, as a few purists are advocating for. How does anyone expect the league to produce new talents for the Super Eagles when the competition only starts when the organisers are pressurised to do so?

The future doesn’t look bright for the beautiful game, if the same characters are allowed to run the operations of the league. A league without official television rights holder is a circus, which should not be taken seriously. Such leagues obviously cannot produce national team players since they wouldn’t want their careers truncated through the organisers’ ineptitude. A league without title sponsors has no business with the corporate world – it has unwittingly become a commercial failure. A league without official insurance company for the clubs, coaches and players can best be likened to celebrating mediocrity.

How do the organisers expect the players to play with their souls during game without cognate collaterals to secure their family’s future? How do we expect to discover new players to replace ageing ones, when the organisers can’t compel clubs to have thriving nurseries with boys who are truly the ages they claim to be. With dead nurseries, what we have is a colony of age-cheats who has crippled the game here despite Nigeria winning the U-17 World Cup several times. Rather than get better as they grow older, our kids who are world beaters melt away like ice-cream kept under the scorching sun.

A league leadership that continually refuses to enforce rules enshrined in the league’s constitution makes the game’s growth static. The league organisers don’t care about the quality of coaches who handle the teams weekly. In past, we had an array of trained coaches such as Alabi Aissien, Adegboye Onigbinde, Monday Sinclair, Joseph Erico, Bitrus Bewarang, the late Shuaibu Amodu, Kashimawo Laloko, the late Willy Bazuaye, the late Christopher Udumezue, the late Paul Hamilton, the late Joseph Ladipo a.k.a. Jossy Lad et al, who added technical value to the game. These coaches enjoyed their jobs. They took pride in discovering new players who came to displace established stars. Indeed, these older generation of coaches knew how to hunt for young boys in the schools, unlike now when all that qualifies you to coach any team is to be a former footballer or ex-international. It doesn’t matter if you have a coaching certificate.

Talents cannot be motivated to give their best during matches on empty stomachs. A league where club owners openly declare that their clubs won the titles with little contributions from the players and coaches cannot produce new national team players. These recalcitrant club owners buttress their claims by changing the coaches and players who won them the title 100 per cent. Of course, these teams falter in that year’s continental assignments, yet the organisers allow the trend to continue by blaming national teams’ coaches who opt for Nigeria-born players.

A league whose organisers want us to watch matches only through our phones, not by attending live games at stadia to indentify and cheer budding stars should quietly throw in the towel, should be asked if that is how leagues are administered in Europe. Who would provide telephone owners that data to watch games over 90 minutes, when people hardly have enough airtime to attend to their needs?

If fans stay away from match venues by watching games on telephone, one wonders how the clubs can settle their bills. Is this how leagues are run in other climes? Shouldn’t the priority be for terrestrial telecast of games like we have elsewhere? Fans can sit in pubs, viewing centres and their homes to watch games, if the ones they like are shown on television. It won’t cost them anything to watch their matches at home or at friend’s joints unlike having to pay for data before watching matches. Fans used data on their phones for gambling or checking results of other leagues across the world, not to watch any game which can be seen on television.

Can’t our organisers follow  the trend in established leagues in this lockdown, where television rights is the oil to run the competition? Except these flaws highlighted are addressed, the local game stars would not  be considered good enough to play for the Super Eagles.

The late Shuiabu Amodu once stated that the domestic league was filled with average players stressing that such basic skills as effectively trapping the ball passed another player had to be taught at the Super Eagles level. Amodu was miffed that the local players couldn’t cope with national team training drills, wondering what their coaches teach them in the clubs. Amodu is qualified to talk about the dearth of talents in the league, having made his mark from here with BCC Lions of Gboko, although he was a student of the Alabi Aissien coaching school.

The late Amodu was pilloried by most people for de-marketing the local game. Things have not changed since Amodu quit national team job. Rather than co-opt Amodu into the mechanics of the local game, he was left towatch the game to decline until his death. It took the former Edo State governor Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole’s magnanimity to approve cash for Amodu to open a kiddies academy to groom new talents, some of whom are in the current Bendel Insurance FC side.

Gone are the days when coaches such as Aissien, Onigbinde, Erico et al attended refresher courses in Europe, with the new knowledge impacting positively on the games, with contrasting styles which raised the stakes, leaving the fans having full value for their money. In fact, watching Julius Berger FC  of Lagos play under Erico brought joy to the fans, irrespective of the results. Adewale Bridge Boys, like they were called thrilled fans with short crisp passes which left their opponents gasping for breath. The players’ scintillating skills left the fans at the stand yearning for more. When the Bridge Boys scored a goal in the past, the ovation was resounding because of the manner it was executed. Berger players were not giants, but they tossed the ball among themselves, the fans respond by counting the number of time they did it, with their opponents running around the pitch like mulls, unable to regain possession.

Have heard the current coaches’ post match and pre match chats. Here are some of them compiled by my colleagues to fully capture the rot in the domestic league. Read them and have a good laugh, dear reader.

1. “By the Grace of God we will win, and will give God the glory”
2. ‘’My Boys did not play to instructions that’s why we lost the game.’’
3. ‘’The referee robbed us with bad officiating.”
4. ‘’We arrived late for the game as fatigue crept into the team, that’s why we lost points.’’
5. ‘’The pitch is not good enough, so movement of the ball wasn’t good.
6. ‘’My boys couldn’t play well because there wasn’t enough security at the stadium, and the fans were hostile on us. ‘’

Nigeria we truly hail thee!