No to age cheats

By  Ade Ojeikere

The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begin in a few days without easily the most successful football nation at the multi-sports competition, Nigeria. Nigerians celebrated a gold medal feat at the Games in 1996 in Atlanta, a silver celebration session in Beijing in 2002, and a bronze in Brazil in 2016. We have had several soccer sides bear the sobriquet Dream Team.

Nwankwo Kanu, Daniel Amokachi, and Austin Okocha (no disrespect to the Atlanta’96 gladiators) were the popular names mentioned by the joyous Americans. This love for the Dream Team players wasn’t only in Atlanta. I heard them loud and clear at malls in Philadelphia where I visited to see my younger sister before heading back to Nigeria. It was pure magic. The players exhibited so much understanding that people could predict which of their moves upfront would result in goals. The players were our best at that time. This fact is at the root of subsequent failed attempts by other Dream Teams.

Our leagues at all levels are now death traps with referees and away team members being the victims. Sadly, State FAs and the host clubs get slap-on-the-wrist verdicts with the verdicts of investigation panels unable to state clearly if the away team should be awarded the mandatory three points and three goals for a game said to have been disrupted by the home fans. How can the panel establish encroachment against the home yet not award the three points and three goals to the visitors? Perhaps, we need to be told what the rule on encroachment states categorically. I digress.

The silver medal in Beijing against Argentina would have been gold if the coaches picked our best. They opted for boys who won them glory at the lower levels, forgetting that years have rolled by and those boys weren’t our best anywhere. Fixation is the bane of Nigerian coaches. They would play their wards until they start walking with sticks. No matter how you try to fortify their squads, they dig deep into the filthy past like the pig in the sty. Had the coach used the over-aged players properly, and picked our best history would have repeated itself in Beijing.

The bronze medal feat in Brazil didn’t come without the biggest problem with football’s growth here – government interference albeit from the sports ministry, in this case, the sports minister. Let’s not remind ourselves of the shameful setting where a Japanese lover of the team paid for our expenses. The story of the team’s camping exercise is messy such that Nigeria arrived in Brazil a few hours before her first game. What a country! Was it the minister’s duty to prepare the federations’ athletes (in this case footballers) for the games? Had the minister done his job well by ensuring that cash for the team’s camping in the US was ready on time, he would have chosen where he wanted them to stay, if he smelt any foul play? The federation scavenged for cash to take the team to the US and it paid off as the team won a bronze medal, making the minister apologise to the contingent. This ministerial apology wasn’t necessary if the minister wasn’t a meddlesome interloper. Ironically, the Dream Team which was labelled black turned out to be the best, though we won a bronze medal.

It is the NFF’s job to prepare the team. The minister’s roles include getting the cash from the government for the contingents’ trips, ensure corporate sponsorship and handle logistics for the teams like other countries do, but obviously, this former minister’s focus wasn’t on quality planning. The boys, however, showed great resilience and professionalism to beat Japan 5-4 in the opening match with Oghenekaro Etebo scoring four goals from the midfield. John Mikel Obi made his cheques available to offset bills for the team in the US. This writer isn’t surprised since Mikel has always been a patriot, forget his inability to honour the country’s matches in his heydays at Chelsea.

It is unfortunate that we are going to another Olympics without the country’s male or female soccer teams. Such competitions ought to be our birthright considering the depth of talents domiciled in the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the country. The state governments have shirked their responsibility of providing the facilities for the budding talents in the LGAs to recreate. Perhaps, the state governors have forgotten that is part of their responsibilities to ensure that the governed live a healthy life. People would gain a lot from engaging in sports, especially the youth who would be compelled to embrace the games of their choices and inevitably depart from the societal vices for good.

In the absence of a credible platform to engage the citizenry in sports, the country is left to use those that are available. The danger in this arrangement is that they are not properly groomed and rely mostly on their innate skills and what they copied while watching their idols participate in their sport. The athletes discovered under such tardy settings are prone to misinforming their federations about their ages and other statistics needed to guide their career path to glory as we have in other sports-loving nations.

Civilised countries develop their sports through the neighbourhood system where facilities are built to engage the youth and push them away from social vices. Nurseries serve as the basis for storing the data of those discovered. Such information help to nurture and monitor the good ones to stardom. Besides, nurseries lay the foundation where the athletes are taught the rudiments of the game. It is at such factories that playing styles and patterns unique to such countries are evolved.

The ages of some of our footballers in the past have been questionable. It explains their inability to attain their Golan heights attained by others in the different sports. The Argentine side that beat Nigeria at the Holland 2005 World U-20 Youth Championship still has most of their members still active in the game unlike ours.  Again, who would believe that Ajiboye was adjudged a better goalkeeper than De Gea at the U-17 World Cup in 2007? Need I waste space to do an evaluation of De Gea and Ajiboye? The examples of many of our cadet players disappearing like ice cream kept under the scorching sun are legendary.

We can’t be talking about growing talents at the nurseries without standardising the academies that abound in the country. The fraud committed by some disgruntled folks in the name of soccer academies can only be curtailed if the NFF through its state affiliates compel all such bodies to register with it. That way, the authorities can identify who the fraudster is if such allegations arise. This collegiate arrangement will eliminate age cheats because a kid discovered in Edo State, for instance as Ikponwonsa Ikponwonsa in 1988 as a 12-year old, cannot be Etim Etim in 2008 claiming to be 16. The details of his data from his first registration in Edo State will give him out even as Etim Etim.

In 2009, Neymar drew all the applause spotting Brazil’s over-size jersey as a substitute in most games at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos during the FIFA-17 World Cup. Brazil didn’t play in the finals like our Golden Eaglets. Yet, many of those young boys are in the current Brazilian side. Ours have either retired or have quit the game for several reasons.

We have won the U-17 World Cup diadem five times, yet we haven’t been able to play in the World Cup finals at the U-20 level since 1989. It doesn’t add up, especially where the bulk of the U-17 players graduated to the next category. Winning the cadet trophy five times suggests that we have a viable template for nurseries. Foul. The dearth of talents is the reason Rohr is opting for the Nigeria-born kids, whose ages are verifiable at the touch of the button on any wire service, unlike ours where we still present manipulated sworn affidavits, even for talents born in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

We cannot continue with a system that has crippled our sports. We need to do those things others do seamlessly if we hope to compete with them. Age plays a vital role in sports. We recycle ageing stars because we have no nurseries to groom talents.

Who cares if we are not in Tokyo with adults as kids? No to age cheats. Where is the little Messi of Nigeria? Do you remember him?