The Nation Newspaper

Category: Ade Ojeikere

  • Fermented hypocrisy

    Fermented hypocrisy

    Nigeria is in very big trouble. The country must wake up to the reality that our national flag won’t be hoisted among the comity of nations at the 2026 World Cup to be co-hosted by the USA, Canada, and Mexico. I’m not an alarmist. But like the trained watchdog, I always raise the alarm when danger lies in wait ahead of us in sporting competitions – this time the 2026 World Cup.

    Most Nigerians are experts in crying over spilled milk. We derive pleasure in looking at the effects of a problem instead of trying to diagnose the cause of an ailment and treat it at its roots. We enjoy listening to ourselves believing that the world would wait for us while we are still in our deep sleep.

    Are we going to watch in awe whilst the ticket is being prepared tacitly for South Africa? The latest twist to the qualification campaign has given the group rival Bafana Bafana of South Africa a slight edge in the race for the qualification.

    A report in the international media last week Sunday indicated that: ”The Warriors of Zimbabwe have concluded arrangements to have the rest of their home games in the qualifier in South Africa. Zimbabwe does not have a CAF-approved stadium, as it is working to revamp the National Sports Stadium based in Harare.

    The immediate question to ask is if it is right for a member of a particular World Cup group to choose to play her matches in the home country of one of the group’s members. Where lies the home advantage that teams have in such round-round fixtures? Who would the Bafana Bafana fans be rooting for when Zimbabwe plays her first ‘home’ game inside the Orlando Stadium against South Africa? Who would the South African fans be rooting for when the current group leaders Rwanda come up against Zimbabwe, knowing the threat they would be to Bafana Bafana if they win? Dear reader, if you ask me to answer my posers, who would I ask?

    The group comprises Nigeria, South Africa, Benin, Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Lesotho. The group winner will directly qualify for the World Cup, and the runner-up could compete in the play-off to advance to the inter-confederation playoffs.

    Granted the Zimbabweans hosted Super Eagles at the Huye Stadium in Rwanda during the first round of the qualifier which ended in a draw. Shouldn’t we question the rationale in shifting the venue for Zimbabweans for the second time, especially after a game had been played there? Is this not a case of shifting the goalpost after the competition has begun? If Nigeria couldn’t beat Lesotho in Uyo, what is the guarantee that we would beat Zimbabwe inside the Orlando Stadium with South Africans obviously supporting them?

    The Warriors of Zimbabwe will use Orlando Stadium as their home ground against Lesotho on June 7 and Bafana Bafana will then host them four days later on June 11. Zimbabwe does not have a CAF-approved stadium, as it is working to revamp the National Sports Stadium based in Harare.

    Aren’t these landmines sufficient markers to guide us towards picking the next Technical Adviser for the Super Eagles, now that we have chosen a coaching upstart as our Head Coach? Why do we pretend as if the position of the Technical Adviser is atop that of the Head Coach?  Of course, the occupants for both posts have a foreigner as Technical Adviser whilst a Nigerian carries the tag of Head Coach. Need I list the past occupants since 1976? Or, aren’t two heads better than one again?

    Interestingly, a coach is as good as his last game? Would we say that the country’s 2-0 loss to Mali in a recent international friendly match is sufficient citation for Finidi to be handed the daunting task of beating South Africa in Uyo and Benin Republic on away soil? Finidi’s preference for European coaching assistants confirms my submission in the column that Nigerian coaches can’t do this job diligently. Finidi’s choice of Daniel Amokachi as the second assistant coach is political with Baruwa keeping his position as goalkeeper trainer. Curiosity compelled this writer to ask who Abideen Baruwa is. As a goalkeeper trainer for the Super Eagles, is this not the reason  we have goalkeeping problems in the team? You tell me.

    Finidi has given key positions such as first assistant coach, fitness trainer, and match analyst to Europeans because they would add more value to the team’s tactical play based on their antecedents on the job and experience than Nigerians, truth be told. So, where are those who rooted for indigenous coaches for the Super Eagles which produced Finidi as the Head Coach? He has unwittingly picked foreigners ahead of Nigerians. Sadly, the NFF is saying they can’t stop his choices though they negate the very principle for which Finidi was selected. What a country.

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    What Finidi’s choices suggest is that Daniel Amokachi is behind a German-Nigerian who is the first assistant. This German-Nigerian holds a German passport and may not have visited the country like the two other European match analysts and fitness trainers. It is okay for a coach to pick European assistants. But, it’s forbidden for us to recruit a very competent coach. Isn’t this another case of fermented hypocrisy?

    Those who have thrown Finidi at us have forgotten that they told us that he didn’t have the coaching licence to sit on the bench. If yes, when did he upgrade his credentials? One wonders what those who stated that the government ordered them to give the job to Nigerians would now say.  The same government would cast an indulgent eye when money is being spent on foreigners that they directed to be given to Nigeria. A bunch of fermented hypocrites.

    My problem with those insisting on having a Nigerian coaching bench is that they are quick to multiply the going rate of the naira to the dollar when the figure of what foreign coaches earn comes to the fore. They forget the huge returns on this kind of investment if the team does well in such a major soccer competition as the senior World Cup.

    Interestingly, Nigeria has started poorly on the road to the 2026 World Cup qualification, drawing at home to lowly rated Lesotho and holding Zimbabwe to an embarrassing draw away from home and both games ended 1-1. The Super Eagles are currently third in Group C behind Rwanda and South Africa and would be hoping to get their first wins when they face the Bafana Bafana and Benin Republic next month.

    If Nigeria must avoid missing the next World Cup, the players must know the implications of not attending the Mundial. Not attending the World Cup for eight years would destroy the progress we have achieved in the past. Nigeria’s other cadres have missed out on participating in their World Cups. We glossed over it. Soon, the hurricane would sweep off Nigeria from the World Cup, leaving in its wake sorrow, blood, tears, and all shades of buck-passing.

    Giving Finidi the task of handling the Super looks like a trap set to destroy his football career except Nigerians support him.

    No stories. The World Cup isn’t executed through prayers, neither is it a lottery lot nor a centre where anyone can walk in to operate the gaming machines. No. It is a platform to showcase excellence built over time and not a stage to exhibit mediocrity as we have always done in the past.

  • Toying with World Cup ticket

    Toying with World Cup ticket

    Is Nigeria now a circus? Certainly not.  But our quest for a new Head Coach for the Super Eagles has made the NFF; with due respect, a colony of jesters. Yes, one would have thought that the football eggheads applied common sense in picking Finidi George ahead of Emmanuel Amuneke. One was therefore shocked to read a statement credited to Victor Ikpeba that the federation’s paucity of funds pushed the decision of a new coach to the local coaches who always come cheap.

    I was shocked by this cash-strapped hypothesis knowing what Nigeria stands to gain money-wise by qualifying for the 2026 World Cup slated to be hosted by three countries. The USA, Canada, and Mexico, all qualified automatically. The remaining 45 slots will be filled through qualifying competitions.

    Perhaps, if we had thinking federation chieftains, they ought to have thought outside of the box of ways and means to outsource cash, or is it sponsorship from the corporate world using the federation’s marketing Czar, not those lightweight companies ambushing the body’s franchise.

    The immediate past NFF President Amaju Pinnick, love him or hate him, raised the bar in the quest to make the federation solvent in conjunction with the body’s marketing company.

    Pinnick dragged several firms under different nomenclatures to finance ideas he thought the federation could run its activities without necessarily relying on the government.

    Qualifying for the senior World Cup isn’t an assignment for coaching upstarts no matter his pedigree as a player. Coaching is a different kettle of fish. One isn’t discrediting Finidi George, but his decision to recruit a foreign assistant who would add value to the team’s department puts a lie on those rooting for the Nigerian bench for the Super Eagles. This won’t guarantee Nigeria the 2026 World Cup ticket. It is looking like Nigeria won’t be at the 2026 World Cup even before the first ball is kicked.

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    Indeed, I chuckled at the story which stated that the NFF would pick Finidi’s assistants with names such as Emmanuel Amuneke and Daniel Amokachi being touted. Would NFF have done that to the foreign coaches? Impossible. Rather, the foreign coaches would openly isolate the Nigerian coaches attached to the team and work with those they brought from Europe. NFF members would be moping while the Nigerians are rendered otiose. After all, NFF adopted the alternate rule when they dropped Finidi and Ike Shorunmu from one of the team’s games to save cost. Hmmm!

    Aren’t NFF chiefs jokers? How do you in one breath tell the world that Finidi doesn’t have the requisite UEFA coaching licence to sit on the bench? Yet in another breath, the same NFF picked him as the Head Coach of the Super Eagles on a two-year deal. Wait a minute. Wasn’t it this Finidi, who as an assistant coach of the team was seen struggling the jersey of a top player in Portugal with one of his players? Can he earn the players’ respect? Which respect? Wasn’t it reported that big players in the team refused to shake hands with Finidi for daring to start them from the bench in a friendly game where many changes were allowed?

    My problem with those insisting on having a Nigerian coaching bench is that they are quick to multiply the going rate of the naira to the dollar when the figure of what foreign coaches earn comes to the fore. They forget the huge returns on this kind of investment if the team does well in such a major soccer competition as the senior World Cup.

    I’m a proud Nigerian. I believe in everything about this country with a whopping population figure of over 200 million. I’m a Christian, yet my first and middle names (Adetokunbo and Ohioze) are meaningful Nigerian words from the region where I was born. And of course,  my tribe. Everything about me is Nigerian. I have also visited all the countries where people ‘japa’ to, but I chose to return to my native land.

  • The more you look…

    The more you look…

    The English are the owners of the beautiful game otherwise known as football or soccer in some other climes. In fact, they always try to rub it off on other countries anytime they are doing well in any soccer competition and are on the verge of lifting the trophy with their usual slogan: ”Football is coming home.” The English are dogmatic in their beliefs, yet they bent over backwards to accept the fact that at one time in their football history, they didn’t have the quality of a coach to handle their national team, The Three Lions of England.

    Rather than embrace the sentiments of ours by hiding under the cloak of nationalism, the English swallowed their pride by naming Italian soccer tactician Fabio Capello to handle the Three Lions of England. Heaven didn’t fall. Capello was formally appointed as manager of the England national team on December 14, 2007.

    As far back as 2001, 23 years ago, Swede tactician Sven-Goran Eriksson was appointed as the team’s first-ever overseas manager, he coached England’s ‘Golden Generation’ — the likes of David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, and Steven Gerrard — to three major tournaments between 2001 and 2006, though never progressed beyond the quarter-final stage.

    Sven-Goran Eriksson, who managed the golden generation of England men’s football team at the 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cup, has revealed that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. So, what is all the fuss about the Super Eagles being handled by another competent foreign manager, if that is what is best for us in the prevailing circumstance?

    Indeed, England chose the Eriksson and Capello options because they felt it answered the nagging questions surrounding their soccer team during those desperate periods to reinvent the English game.

    The present bunch of Super Eagles are being managed by some of the brightest tacticians whose instructions have reshaped their styles of play and their approaches to the changing trends as the weekly games progress. They, therefore, would be taken aback and show acts of insubordination if they return home to find a coach who can’t distinguish between his left from his right hand as the Super Eagles coach.

    Pray, the more this writer tries to search for local coaches to handle the Super Eagles without rancour, the less I can point at the one who would be able to live with the players’ big egos which have always been the bane of domestic coaches with the boys. The late Stephen Keshi had issues with Joseph Yobo and Osaze Odemwingie before the 2014 World Cup held in Brazil. Both players would have been dropped from the squad but for the intervention of highly placed Nigerians who prevailed on the coach to temper justice with mercy on issues of indiscipline, whatever that meant then.

    How can we forget in a hurry the infamous encounters between Coach Sunday Oliseh and the team’s goalkeeper and Captain Vincent Enyeama in France preparatory to an international friendly game? How about Mikel Obi’s unsavoury comments on Sunday Oliseh in his podcast recently? It must be said that Oliseh showed maturity by not honouring Mikel’s uncouth statements with a response.

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    In the last two weeks, Samson Siasia has been stirring the hornet’s nest with his views in the media while reflecting on his tenure as the coach of the different national teams he handled.

    He has called out some of his players. He should be reminded that they would have their day soon in the media for balance. Siasia ought not to have said he could not tolerate Mikel’s stubbornness or was it appropriate for him to have informed his interviewer that he deliberately left out Mikel from his best Nigeria 11. Granted it was his opinion, he ought to have been more diplomatic on the subject.

    Only recently did we read about the cold shoulder the big boys gave to stand-in coach Finidi George for not fielding them the way they would have wished in the team’s last game. Is anyone surprised by the players’ conduct? Well, this writer isn’t. Rather it is one of the reasons foreign managers have an edge in my scale of preference for coaches. The foreign coach would have prepared the big boys to be dropped in the morning before the game. He would have told them his plans and why he would rest them. Our coaches forget that these boys find it difficult to return to their teams’ first 11 if they don’t play for their country’s first team regularly which is why they were recruited in the first instance.

    Peseiro had problems with some of the big boys, whom one of his assistants listed as Ekong, Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman, and Kelechi Iheanacho. The face-off wasn’t so obvious, especially when Ekong as captain, confessed that he wasn’t on speaking terms with Peseiro in the period leading to Nigeria’s participation at the Africa Cup of Nations held in Cote d’Ivoire. Yet, Peseiro gave him the team’s captaincy badge. The Nigerian coach wouldn’t have been as mature in handling the impasse the way Peseiro did. The Nigerian coach would have taken his pound of flesh. He wouldn’t have bothered if he spilled Ekong’s blood to settle scores with the defender. Ekong was rightly adjudged the best player in the competition. The Ivoriens beat Nigeria 2-1 in the final game to lift the trophy.

    Nigerian coaches need to be educated on how to handle such clay pot and rat situations without breaking the pot. Being coach of the Super Eagles isn’t all about playing the game to score goals. It also includes man management among other indices. One would have thought that our former internationals having played for big European teams would have outgrown the pettiness of bruising the younger ones’ ego on the altar of instilling discipline. It has shown clearly that our ex-internationals learned nothing from playing in Europe. Chairman Christian Chukwu didn’t play in Europe but his interpersonal relationship with the new generation of stars was top-notch. He didn’t need to remind them of his exploits as a player for the Green Eagles. Who says that respect doesn’t beget respect? You tell me.

    Playing for the Super Eagles should be the platform to showcase excellence not to exhibit mediocrity. This has been the bane of the team recently. All kinds of players are invited to the team; such all-comers’ tendencies lower the team’s standards soonest. In the past, it was to identify which player to be dropped. Not so anymore. Super Eagles camp is now a sick bay. Players are invited when they aren’t playing for their European teams. The NFF no longer interrogates the team lists submitted by our foreign coaches.

    Countries’ growth in football is measured by the number and quality of home-grown lads. For us, it is the reverse. We chase those discovered and nurtured overseas. Unfortunately, nurseries and academies whose activities are not streamlined by the federation are the ones exposing our local kids through shylock agents to Europe, the Americas, and the Diaspora. What a shame!

  • African soccer, my foot

    African soccer, my foot

    Truth always sticks out like a sore thumb. It only takes time to know its significance. I laughed my heart out after reading a message emanating from the NFF that its Technical Committee would meet to decide the next Super Eagles helmsman. What that presupposes is that another rebuilding of the team’s structures beckons. According to the federation, the first game of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers between the Bafana Bafana and the Super Eagles will be held on June 7 inside the Nest of Champions Stadium in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

    I was wondering who the members of the Technical Committee were and if they could deliver the right Super Eagles manager in one meeting. Quickly, my mind raced to the fact that Tuesday was meant to sort out the applications, pick the best six coaches based on parameters set by the members, and then send out invitation letters to those shortlisted for a formal screening session by knowledgeable tacticians in the game.

    I tried to pick my brain to find out the kind of parameters the technical committee members would list for the new man to provide answers in an interview. In seconds, my mind’s eye brought forth the laughable parameter of knowledge of African football. What is so-called? What are videos for, if not to serve as referrals for those seeking to update their knowledge of any subject? Happily, YouTube among other channels is awash with clips on bits and pieces of African football.

    Pray, football has no tribe. It is the same all over the world and the rules are dynamic as specified by FIFA to the over 211 federations affiliated to the world soccer ruling body. Even within the African continent, there are contrasting styles of play among the nations occasioned by each African nation’s preference for European coaches.

    How then would some people sit inside the room to pick the next Super Eagles head coach and insist on their knowledge of the African game as a prerequisite? Isn’t it quite ironic that people can be talking about African soccer, yet most of the countries are handled by foreign coaches, without apologies? Do Africans not dominate the big leagues in the world? What else is there to learn about Africa that hasn’t been exhibited by these glorious African youth?

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    Another amusing parameter would be to find out if he would be prepared to stay in Nigeria as if he won’t be paid with taxpayers’ money here. Such discussions expose us as being unserious because anyone seeking a Nigerian job must live in Abuja, which is where his employers are domiciled, for instance. The NFF should, therefore, get a befitting accommodation for the next manager in Abuja and possibly in Lagos. What would it cost the NFF to plead with one of its sponsors to buy the coach a car and brand it? I also hope that the new manager’s offices in Abuja and anywhere the NFF men deem fit to have one is readily fitted with state-of-the-art communication gadgets for his work.

    Do we need to remind NFF to ensure that it outsources the payment of the new manager’s wages when due? We are tired of the sour grapes between the federation and our coaches over unpaid salaries, allowances, and match bonuses. Whispers in high places in Abuja have suggested that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration would be persuaded to provide the cash to pay the new manager. The government would find a way of the delays which TSA causes to the payment process to foreigners in hard currencies. Sadly, in Nigeria, we develop sports from the top. If the governor or his deputy likes one or two sports, lickspittles around the government would make a scene out of the sports, especially when their principals are around. That isn’t sports development.

    Of course, the team needs a better bus, not what they ride in when in camp. One is usually ashamed whenever the team conveying our Super Eagles drives into the stadium. You need to watch how clubs announce their arrival while driving into their stadium’s premises in marvelous buses. In fact, the tense atmosphere in the stadium reaches its crescendo when the two teams are spotted around the stadium. Indeed, what distinguishes the two teams is the colour of their buses. The aerial photography on television while watching at home pumps up everyone’s adrenalin.

    Super Eagles’ buses shouldn’t be used for rental purposes by anyone considering its significance. Government officials, their relations eager to create any event of importance should go to the different garages to pay for buses to take their invitees to their home to celebrate. Doing such illegal activities translates to abuse of office which should attract sanctions from the government if brought to their notice.

    Sometimes I wonder if our NFF members think, with due apologies to them if they do. Otherwise, how is it that they always make the same mistakes with almost every contractual agreement they sign with our foreign coaches? Where on earth are coaches employed on a part-time basis? Coaching is a full-time job. Not so for NFF. Super Falcons head coach Randy Waldrum renewed a part-time deal with NFF where he called his employers crooks and he still keeps his job. Who does that?

    The clubs and countries that sack their coaches have a list of managers whose patterns of play fit with their football philosophy, making their transition smooth whenever the deals are struck. These entities headhunt the coaches who meet their criteria on a scale of preference starting with their first choices. By the time they got to their third candidate, a decision would have been made. Names of likely coaches to replace sacked or released ones start with speculations. Nothing is made public by the prospecting club or countries until the unveiling day. Negotiations are done by those whose duty it is to conduct that exercise and the managers’ agents.

    This writer’s problem with the composition of the federation’s technical committee is the skewed perception of the qualities that the new helmsman must have. If part of the criteria of recruiting has anything to do with how well he distinguished himself as a player for club and country, then the King of soccer, Brazil’s Pele would have been lured by irresistible offers to coach his country’s senior team. Again, for anyone aspiring into leadership positions, his integrity should be above reproach. It isn’t negotiable.

    Nigeria needs thinking coaches with coaching characteristics reminiscent of Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson, et al. Coaches who think outside of the box to win competitive matches. Nigeria needs a coach who is interested in improving the quality of coaching in the domestic leagues for the products from that platform to qualify to play at the national team level. Nigeria needs the coaches’ coach not one ‘marketed’ by Nigerians who are European clubs’ scouts and agents for mercantile gains.

    Nigeria doesn’t need coaches who are very active in the sale of players to European leagues and other such soccer competitions in the Diaspora. We need to cultivate a synergy between the Super Eagles and the age group teams. That way we are sure of enough new lads to replace those due for retirement and edged out due to injuries or old age. We would be killing the nurseries in the domestic leagues if we continued to parade oldies in the Super Eagles under the guise of their experience in the game. Isn’t it when you introduce kids at an early age that they start to garner the so-called experience? About now we started reaping the benefits of employing foreign coaches for the Super Eagles.

  • Drop Waldrum from the Olympics

    Drop Waldrum from the Olympics

    I struggled with sleep on Tuesday evening watching the second leg game between Bayana Bayana of South Africa and Nigeria’s Super Falcons inside the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria, South Africa. The match was the decider to know which of the two countries would qualify to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games later in July in France. The game ended on a barren note. Super Falcons won the first leg played in Abuja by 1-0, a goal scored by the team’s captain, Rasheedat Ajibade.

    The one-goal win on aggregate qualified the Falcons to participate in the Women’s Olympic Football Tournament for the first time since 2008 and will join Brazil, Spain, and Japan in a potentially-explosive Group C in July.  This Group C is a no-brainer in terms of the chances of Nigeria qualifying from it. The pedigree of Brazil, Spain, and Japan dwarfs Nigeria.

    However, soccer is a leveler, depending on the team’s preparedness which shouldn’t start after the draws have been made public. I digress!

    The South Africans were fidgety on Tuesday evening largely due to their inexperience while the Nigerians, always loaded to the hilt with experienced girls, ran around the pitch without a discerning tactical plan. They barely strung together two passes or could control the ball expertly before deciding what to do with it. The falcons’ clueless pattern of play wasn’t ever going to produce a goal for Nigeria, even if the game was played for 900 minutes.

    The Falcons have qualified for the Olympics but a lot needs to be done by the coaching crew. What were we expecting as Nigerians from Randy Waldrum? Those in NFF who renewed Waldrum’s contract hired him part-time for a full-time assignment. Would it shock anyone to read here that Waldrum didn’t return with the team from South Africa? He went straight to Pittsburgh in the United States of America (USA) from Johannesburg.  Who does that?

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    The Sports Minister, Senator John Owan Enoh should know that his ministry is directly responsible for Nigeria’s participation at the Olympic Games. Given the countries in Nigeria’s group, it is looking like a jamboree for the Falcons if Waldrum behaves like one who needs to be pampered to return to Nigeria. So, Waldrum can be asked to remain as the coach of the Super Falcons while another coach takes the squad to the Olympics. After all, the Nigerian coach Justin Madugu handled the two games against Cameroon which the Falcons drew 0-0 in Yaoundé and won the Abuja leg 1-0.

    Coach Randy Waldrum needs to decide if he truly wants the Nigeria job. He can’t stroll into the country a week to games and expect the camp to be filled with the players. What Waldrum must understand is that the world is a global village where the big girls in the team can monitor everything happening in the camp from wherever they are.

    It was quite embarrassing watching the South Africans passing through the immigration centre inside the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja seven days to the match day, and it showed in the way they battled our girl in every department of the game in Abuja. Who will blame Oshoala for arriving at the Abuja camp 24 hours before the first leg in Abuja? Not when Coach Waldrum does whatever he likes and goes unpunished.

    Strikingly, history has an uncanny way of repeating itself. The Falcons are ranked in the 36th. But like you know football isn’t rocket science. Nigeria could spring surprises when the matches begin. But not with Coach Waldrum who may not come to the country until two weeks to the competition complaining about unpaid wages and abusing NFF officials by either accusing them of unproven malpractices or gross incompetence. Yet, he renewed his contract with the perennial debtor federation.

    We must rescue our football from this coach who enjoys dragging Nigeria’s name in the mud. He has raised the alarm in the international media that the Super Falcons should be camped in an unnamed European country as if that isn’t given. We adopted this style in the past to make the players get used to the type of climatic situation they would face during such competitions as the Olympics. Not anymore. Our players have been living in European countries and other continents with harsher climatic conditions.

    Coaching is a function of hiring and firing depending on the manager’s successes, especially for inpatient employers. In fact, when teams are fumbling their fans wave the white flag calling for the coach’s sack, if the teams’ fortunes continue to dwindle. What stands the European clubs’ management out is the fact that they have organised and tested systems which throw up the next manager when anyone is sacked or should I say released mutually. Indeed, there are two types of coaches. Those already sacked, and those waiting for their sack letters.

    Waldrum shouldn’t tell us where to camp the team. NFF should ask Falcons to start their camping sessions soonest in Nigeria with the mandate to Waldrum to rebuild the team by introducing new players from the domestic leagues. Besides, such localised camping sessions can help the girls whose season ends early to head to the camp. Movement to the designated European camp should only start when the girls are complete.

    Brazil, Spain, and Japan don’t need to camp in Europe because the culture of women’s football comes to them like second nature. Their domestic leagues are some of the best in the world with credible nurseries to churn out new players and coaches seamlessly. Pitches in the three countries in Nigeria are world class with the girls properly motivated.

    Honourable Sports Minister sir, countries that would do well in Paris in July began their preparations eight or 12 years ago. The Olympic Games have a four-year circle meaning that it takes eight years (two Olympic circles) at the least to produce athletes who would win laurels at the multi-sports competition not after the draws of the competition are known. Winning medals at the Olympics isn’t as easy as purchasing a lottery ticket at the grocery shop. No. It is much more than nursing a wish.

    No country runs its sports on the yearly fiscal budget because of its clumsiness. Sports competitions are run on a calendar system which gives participating countries enough time to prepare adequately for periods of one to four years. Besides, there are other tournaments that serve as qualifiers for the main events across the globe which makes it imperative that funding must be handy, not dependent on any form of bureaucracy.

    The countries that excel in sporting events have systems that guarantee enough funds for the sportsmen and sportswomen to compete with the best such as tax rebates on sport-friendly firms, lotteries, and businesses owned by wealthy nationals who know what is in such a sponsorship that benefits them by the sitting government. Such financial taxes are spelled out to companies and wealthy citizens after agreements have been reached. These cast-in-stone policies are binding to all the parties to such an extent that breaches are adequately addressed to allow either of the parties to seek redress in court.

    Sports is the biggest Public Relations (PR) tool that any government can use to change people’s perception of its citizenry. You need to walk along the streets whenever Nigeria has a sporting activity and see how the streets would be desolate. You would only realise that people are indoors from the thunderous roars from different houses when our sports ambassadors conquer their opponents. The descriptions of how the feats happened are compelling, especially those delivered by the native speakers of the languages in the country.

  • Guardiola’s assistant indeed

    Guardiola’s assistant indeed

    Time was when we were told that a certain foreign coach for the Super Eagles was highly recommended for the Nigeria job by former Arsenal FC of London’s manager Arsene Wenger. The coach was employed. He assumed work with his first signature on the team’s style of play being the introduction of the offside trap whilst our players were defending. Attempts to find answers from those who flew the Wenger kite why his nominee was playing the offside web, a system alien to what Wenger showcased when the Gunners excited the world with their scintillating ball skills, fell on deaf ears. The message from their stoic silence reminded me of the scenario where the proverbial horse being led to the stream and what transpired when it was forced to drink water.

    Did I hear murmuring to know why Wenger didn’t bother to deny the claim when it was being bandied? Wenger was clearly too busy with meeting the tasks associated with his technical roles with FIFA than to deny what he never influenced. The closest attempt to authenticate Wenger’s influence was pictures of a younger-looking Wenger and the coach in the print media. I laughed then because I have several pictures I took with Wenger at different World Cups’ media centres and mixed zones after matches which didn’t translate to Ade Ojeikere knowing Wenger. Not forgetting that this coach was the product of a search by some wise men who went to interview coaches for the Super Eagles job. Why the rigourous sessions if we truly knew that a purported Wenger recommendation for the job could suffice?

    Whilst this so-called Wenger nominee handled the Super Eagles, the team’s play showed nothing to such or reflect how Arsenal FC of England played their matches. The coach’s styles were different. The coach introduced the 3-5-2 system which led to his sack when some members of the Dream Team 1 who had lost their shirts fought back, using a certain sports minister then to oust the foreigner despite the Wenger confirmation tag on him. This foreigner returned to the country with Japan’s U-20 side and played up to the final game, losing 2-0 to Spain, in a competition in which Nigeria wobbled and fumbled until the country’s U-20 side crashed out of the competition here in Lagos. It is one thing to recruit a coach for the Super Eagles. It is yet another kettle of fish for the cabal in the team to work with such coaches, especially the Lilliputians among them. Sadly, it is from the Lilliputians that the NFF recruits, shielding them under the cloak of experienced tacticians.

    Soon, some of the players seeking relevance would start endorsing the coaches using their media contractors. Of course, not much is expected from students who choose their teachers. It is the reason Nigeria has been rebuilding the Super Eagles since 1976 under Father Tiko.  The Otto Gloria years weren’t any different in terms of how the game was being administered here. We can’t forget the 1980 Green Eagles which had its roots here in the domestic game across the country. We can’t stop trying to stem the rot. Yet, we keep looking the same or at best look worse than where we began, depending on who the incumbent NFF President is. It is obvious that we never learn from our past mistakes since we are specialists in passing the buck.

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    The recruitment of Clemens Westerhof had its crises but the Dutchman was wise by beating the Sports Ministry loyalists and NFF’s renegades in the politics of the game. Again, Westerhof came to our football like a whirlwind; blowing away some of the mistakes of the past in his five-year stay in Nigeria. The jobbers of the industry messed Westerhof up in the United States (US), with the Dutch rendered otiose in the build-up to the Second Round World Cup game in the US.

    Hmmmm! Bora Mulutinovic. Remember him? What hasn’t happened in Nigeria’s football doesn’t exist. France ’98 World Cup was Nigeria’s worst attendance in spite of the fact that we beat Spain 3-2 in the opening. It was a pyrrhic victory.

    We have adopted several bizarre methods of recruiting coaches including doing interviews here in Nigeria where a coach accused the panel of interviewers of asking him for a bribe which he couldn’t substantiate. The Abuja panel picked a Swede with an enviable track record. But there was a gulf in the relationship between the Sports Ministry and the NFF which then wanted the late Shiaubu Amodu to lead the team’s technical crew to that year’s Mundial in the African continent. It never happened and the Eagles were made to serve two masters – the Presidential Task Force and/or the NFF chiefs, who in any case brought the team to the World Cup.

    In 2002, the Sports Ministry chaps stopped the late Amodu from attending the Japan/Korea World Cup as part of the fallouts of the Africa Cup Nations in 2002. Renowned tactician and FIFA and CAF guru Adegboye Onigbinde was invited to lead the team, but his hands were tied. Certain talented players in the team were banned from going near the team. Onigbinde, therefore, went to the World Cup held in Asia.

    I recall taking a bet with Segun Odegbami in London by practically naming Onigbinde’s World Cup squad before it was announced. It was easy because Onigbinde’s methods were transparent and fair given the players he had in the camp to pick from. Nigeria’s World Cup paths have been dogged by bickering between the Sports Ministry officials eager to lord it over NFF chieftains. Not forgetting the controversy surrounding the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). You ask, what is in a name? Plenty, especially in Nigeria football.

    Influence peddlers around our football aim to settle scores after failing to regain their seats in the NFF with every World Cup year, not minding the collateral damages it would cost the country. The people are the same. They fly the kite of trying to rid the federation of sharp practices.

    Pundits weren’t surprised that the Eagles failed at the Brazil 2014 World Cup, one year after Nigeria won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 in South Africa. We couldn’t build on that success story and it resulted in the protest by the players days before Nigeria lost 2-0 to France in the second round. The late Stephen Keshi watched in awe as things fell apart with his team. Keshi eventually lost his job.

    After the 2010 World Cup fiasco, and the show of shame at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, followers of the game thought the emergence of Amaju Melvin Pinnick as NFF president would change the narrative. It didn’t. Instead, it heightened with a deluge of court cases. It was the most turbulent two-term tenure ever which left the country’s soccer teams in dire straits.

    Two foreigners Gernot Rohr and Jose Peseiro have handled the Super  Eagles under different identities. Yet, it is the relationship that Peseiro had with the Special One Jose Mourinho that earned him the Nigeria job. Selling established European coaches as referrals for employing Super Eagles will fail since both assignments are far and wide apart as the dentition of a 100-year-old person.

    Those flying  Pep Guardiola’s credentials as the reason to recruit another of his assistants at Manchester City, Domenec Torrent,  as Nigeria’s next manager, amounts to climbing a high-rise structure with a greasy pole. Guardiola is a magician at the dugout. He plays as many as five patterns in each game using his substitutes to change the way the team plays. I doubt if Domenec Torrent contributes anything that Guardiola takes to his heart and implements.

    NFF, please get us the best manager for Nigeria. Going to the 2026 World Cup to play in the final game is a task that must be achieved. National teams’ assignments aren’t weekly games. They aren’t as demanding as club matches.

  • Growing Super Eagles brand

    Growing Super Eagles brand

    The biggest brand by which sports can be showcased to the corporate world is football largely because of its huge followership. Therefore, when the game enjoys tremendous sponsorship as a result of its meteoric rise in global soccer events, those firms that can find space in the soccer marketing sphere can back the next popular sport to football until a vacuum is created.

    Since Nigeria’s splendid debut outing at the 1994 edition of the senior World Cup in the United States where it exited in the Second Round after being defeated 2-1 by Argentina, Nigeria‘s national team has been unable to improve on this feat despite a pilgrimage of attendance in the last 30 years.

    Had Nigeria grabbed the opportunities that fell on her lap following the country’s remarkable outings at the Atlanta 96 Olympic Games, sponsorship deals, especially the international brands would have been the elixir for growth for the beautiful game here. The country received several requests for international matches with easily the best team, Dream Team 1, captained by Nwankwo Kanu at that time.

    But an all-knowing sports minister preferred to savour the sweetness of the Atlanta 96 Olympic Games gold medal feat than to reap from this achievement through friendly matches with high cash to boost the revenue of the perpetually broke Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). It is this unbridled interference from the government that has kept sports, especially football on its knees because no firm would want to do business with any government knowing its bureaucratic tardiness.

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    If Nigeria had honoured those international friendlies, 28 years ago, we would have understood the dynamics of sport being a business and not mere leisure, which is how we perceive it here. Top firms offered to host the replays against Brazil and Argentina. The cash and business platforms that the two matches would have attracted, 28 years ago, would have made the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) an international brand, which is solvent.

    That is the prize we have paid with that senseless decision, even though it is only during football matches that creed and ethnicity are thrown overboard by Nigerians. Even the criminals abandon their evil trade to cheer our national teams to victory. It doesn’t matter if Nigerians have to stay up late to watch such matches. Soccer is the opium of the people here.

    Recall that the Super Eagles missed its chance of lifting the Africa Cup of Nations diadem back-to-back in 1996 in South Africa but for the idiotic submissions by the late Sani Abacha’s jackboot government, with words rife that the players were compromised to accept the dastardly decision not to participate at the 1996 Africa Cup Nations held in South Africa which Nigeria would have attended as the defending champions, having won it in 1994.

    Some of the Eagles of ’94 were merchants, they mortgaged their career path on the altar of filthy lucre during the jackboot era.  Is anyone still worried that our football is still in diapers, over 63 years after the country’s Independence?

    Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where governors host international matches only to throw the gates open on match days for cheap popularity. The governors’ defence of their decision to host games is always on the excuse of fulfilling the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to their people in the state, this defence is very weak. In other climes, big matches serve as one of the revenue generation platforms that such a country’s FA uses to showcase the marketing outlets and celebrate existing sponsors. The ambience around the match venues in saner climes encourages firms not doing business with such FAs to key into the federations’ programmes, especially those whose products and services are targeted at the masses, albeit the people who throng the stadium to see games.

    The football world watched how Brazil earned a deserving late penalty kick to secure the 3-3 draw against the Spaniards inside the Real Madrid Stadium Tuesday night. A mammoth crowd watched the match from the start to the finish, with everyone connected with prosecuting the game seeing it as a business. Whilst the game was on, the commentators told listeners the number of spectators inside the stadium. Also, right inside the stadium, it was clear to those who wanted to find out if the game was a box office fixtures.

    You neither did not have to persuade any club official to find out how much their clubs were worth nor did the Spanish quarrel with the full disclosure of all that transpired within the stadium to the world by the commentators.

    It was quite sickening to read that the face of the Super Eagles, the Technical Adviser, or is it Head Coach is being linked with primordial sentiments such as what was reported in some national dailies on Tuesday. This writer is miffed that the Chairman of the APC Governors’ Forum, Hope Uzodinma, could be reported in The Guardian online as rooting for the employment of Emmanuel Amunike as the next Super Eagles coach, probably because the former African Footballer of the Year comes from Imo State. This shouldn’t be the case, Mr. Governor, with due respect, sports is a field for the best. In fact, sports reward excellence, not mediocrity which is what such insalubrious moves by Uzodinma portend. Anyway, it shows how busy our leaders are.

    Picking the right coach for the Super Eagles to prepare for the 2026 World Cup can benchmark how the game would look in the future. But there exist some meddlesome interlopers who make it their duty to advise the NFF. One of such interlopers emerged during the week threatening to sue the federation if a local coach wasn’t recruited as the next Super Eagles coach. This is my problem with elites in Nigeria. Elites whose children school overseas are arguing against ‘wastage’ on foreign coaches. Hypocrites. These elites do business with foreigners. In some instances, these interlopers employ foreigners to do jobs in their businesses which could be done by Nigerians. Colonial mentality.

    They are the forerunners of controversies who have kept football on its knees instead of proffering ideas to lift it up to attract good corporate patronage which would make the NFF solvent, not what it has always been – a stool for mystery. Funding for the NFF  is best achieved when the federation isn’t associated with needless controversies such as these. The corporate firm won’t associate their goods and services with ventures perpetually enmeshed in crises.

    The net income before income tax and social security contributions generated by the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF) in 2022 amounted to nearly 143.5 million Brazilian reals, or around 28.4 million U.S. dollars based on the exchange rates of May 31st of that year. This figure represents an increase of roughly 108 percent versus a year earlier.

    The Football Association (known by its abbreviation The FA) is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the oldest football association in the world and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the amateur and professional game in its territory. The Football Association’s net worth in the last five years is as follows:

    The Football Association Networth 2024     $2.82 Billion

    The Football Association Networth 2023     $2.54 Billion

    The Football Association Networth 2022     $2.26 Billion

    The Football Association Networth 2021     $1.98 Billion

    The Football Association Networth 2020     $1.69 Billion

    This is according to Statista Research Department on Aug 25, 2023, the revenue of the German Football Association (DFB) from 2017 to 2020, by segment.

    In 2020, sponsoring and other marketing brought in roughly 163,098 Euros worth of revenue.

    Professional football in Spain is a sociocultural event that significantly contributes to the Spanish economy in terms of demand and supply. In economic terms, during 2013, professional football generated more than €7.6 billion, including direct, indirect, and induced effects, representing 0.75% of the Spanish GDP.

  • Super Eagles coach: Being Nigerian not enough

    Super Eagles coach: Being Nigerian not enough

    Nigerian coaches should be told pointedly that they haven’t done enough to equip themselves for the daunting task of deciding the future of the beautiful game in Nigeria. Having excelled at her debut appearance at the senior World Cup in 1994, and the remarkable contributions of our players in all the leagues in Europe and the Diaspora in the last 30 years, the country has no business parading squads that look like stools for misery in international competitions.

    It is a depressing citation in the 21st Century for Nigeria to be beaten at any level of football by Uganda, with no disrespect to the East African country. When such things happen in saner climes, the football authorities would silently revisit their trajectory in the game to find out where they have gotten it all wrong and retrace their path to glory.

    Indeed, Nigeria emerged as the fifth-best football nation in the world after her senior World Cup debut in 1994 in the United States (U.S), making it simply preposterous to conjure up that 30 years later, we still don’t know how to recruit a coach for our premier soccer team, the Super Eagles. Instead of recruiting coaches to handle our national teams based on the templates of how we want to play the game across our male and female teams, we allow primordial sentiments to becloud our sense of judgment. It is the reason the game doesn’t look beautiful whenever we play at big tournaments.

    Thirty years after our appearance at the World Cup, picking a coach for the Super Eagles should be like a walk in the park. If we aren’t headhunting a competent foreign coach based on his pedigree in the game, we are promoting a coach based on his achievements at the lower ranks of our junior national teams. It should never be an exercise of naming-dropping as it has always been here.

    Those rooting for the employment of a Nigerian as the next Super Eagles coach wherever such a fellow may be, don’t understand the dynamics of the game. It is the reason we totter during big tournaments because such a fellow won’t have the tactical savvy to compete against the best, with what we have at the senior World Cup. No stories. The World Cup isn’t executed either through prayers or is a lottery lot centre where anyone can walk in to operate the gaming machines. No. It is a platform to showcase excellence built over time and not a stage to exhibit mediocrity as we have always done in the past.

    Interestingly, a country’s growth in the game is most times judged by the number of home-grown players in their senior soccer teams at the World Cup, not by the seeking number of Nigeria-born lads discovered by other football nations. For instance, the English national team recently invited an 18-year-old player, Kobbie Mainoo from Manchester United for their men’s senior team to face football giants Brazil and Belgium in two epic international matches. That is showing great faith in their development system and when you look through the whole squad only one player ply his trade outside England and that is the Real Madrid midfield gem, Jude Belligham.

    Speaking about the emergence of Mainoo, Man United legend, Wayne Rooney said: “I think he’s incredible for such a young age, with the maturity he’s shown. When you see any young player come into the first team, they’re normally a bit raw or play off the cuff.

    “He reminds me of a young Bastian Schweinsteiger with how he plays, and he always seems to make the right decisions. He has a very bright future.”

    New kids at the bloc can’t come from myopic structures such as ours. Doesn’t it bother us that Nigeria won the FIFA U-17 World Cups in 2013 and 2015, yet these players aren’t the bedrock of the Super Eagles 11 and nine years after?

     The glaring deficiency speaks to the ages of the players who prosecuted the assignments just as it says a lot about the integrity of members of the two squads’ technical crews.  They’ve done a great disservice to the growth and development of the game here. This is the price cheating nations suffer when their football federations fail to recognise, standardise and empower their football nurseries to discover, groom, and expose their products through national and international competitions. Such coaches are now angling to become the coach of the Super Eagles. They should remain at the kindergarten level discovering kids until they update their knowledge of the game.

    The serious-minded soccer nations expose players from academies who also have the template to monitor those who did well and have juicy packages in big clubs in Europe, the Americas, and the Diaspora. These academies ensure that the players’ career paths are cut to fit their ambitions. Those of them eager to combine playing soccer with going to school are enrolled to be educated. They also have drawn up training schedules to suit their schools’ curriculum, knowing the importance of education when their career as soccer players is over. Nothing happens in such countries as an accident.

    Coaching at the senior level which is where the Super Eagles is essentially about man-management of the players and massaging their egos. Coaching is a function of hiring and firing depending on the manager’s successes, especially for inpatient employers. In fact, when teams are fumbling their fans wave the white flag calling for the coach’s sack, if the teams’ fortunes continue to dwindle. What stands the European clubs’ management out is the fact that they have organised and tested systems that throw up the next manager when anyone is sacked or should I say released mutually. Indeed, there are two types of coaches. Those already sacked,  and those waiting for their sack letters.

    The clubs and countries that sack their coaches have a list of managers whose patterns of play fit with their football philosophy, making their transition smooth whenever the deals are struck. These entities headhunt the coaches who meet their criteria on a scale of preference starting with their first choices. By the time they got to their third candidate, a decision would have been made. Names of likely coaches to replace sacked or released ones start with speculations. Nothing is made public by the prospecting club or countries until the unveiling day. Negotiations are done by those whose duty it is to conduct that exercise and the managers’ agents.

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    Spare me the thought, dear reader,  recall how Nigerian coaches destroyed the career of Sunday Mba after he shone like a million stars at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations held in South Africa which Nigeria won, beating Burkina Faso, courtesy of Mba’s goal in the semi-final and first. Mba has become another forgotten name in the annals of the game with the NFF oblivious of what befell a rising star as he appeared in South Africa, 11 years ago.

    There isn’t any problem with being agents but such agents should be able to identify good talents and expose them to bigger clubs. However, the new manager mustn’t be seen to perform the role of an agent while functioning as the manager of the Super Eagles. The ripple effect of this kind of unholy arrangement is that any discovery loses his position on spurious grounds if he is playing in positions where the manager has an interest. This conflict of interest on the part of the manager is one of the reasons why there is friction between the big stars who dare to question the presence of the better players around the country.

    Discussions on sports globally, especially football, highlight the future with the nurseries being the bedrock for growth. These nurseries discover, train, and retrain the coaches to be abreast with the modern trends of a dynamic sport – in this case football. Unlike in Nigeria where we engage the car in reverse gear and expect it to move forward. Simply put, Nigeria needs to work on her game to compete with the best at the World Cup.

  • While I was away

    While I was away

    To the glory of God, I’m back at my workplace with a lot of pending issues of national interest to address. While I was away, the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations held in Cote d’ Ivoire, which the host won by beating Nigeria 2-1. Super Eagles’ loss wasn’t unexpected, given the patchy manner in which the coach, Jose Peseiro, set up the players to prosecute his obtuse match plans.

    How Peseiro succeeded in hoodwinking Nigerians with his team’s survival football set this writer thinking if Nigerians were content with the breathless displays of our team, just because they found ways of bulldozing their way into the opposition’s net. My angst at the way the team’s sluggish performance found satisfaction among Nigerians could be placed at the doorsteps of Nigerian journalists who hyped the team’s nervy movements through all the stages of the Africa Cup of Nations.

    Surprisingly, the Super Eagles’ tardy defensive football was likened to the uncanny way the Special One, Jose Mourinho sets up his team for top-of-the-bill clashes. It was irritating listening to media men and women celebrate mediocrity as if Mourinho’s sides don’t whip lazy teams silly with goals, including the big ones. The world wouldn’t have celebrated the silky skills and goal-scoring exploits of the Didier Drogbas of this world, if Mourinho’s style was as tepid as Peseiro’s was at the Africa Cup of Nations held in Cote d’ Ivoire with the Super Eagles. Mourinho won trophies with his kind of football, which essentially rested on counter-attacks. Need I mention strikers who excelled in their goal-scoring acts under Mourinho’s tutelage?

    Luckily, Peseiro is history with the Eagles. He could beat his chest to celebrate a silver medal outing for Nigeria, but he was bereft of new ideas to lift the Super Eagles over their Ivorian counterpart. Peseiro’s poor judgment arose when he opted for Samuel Chukwueze to start from the right flank using his left foot instead of allowing Simon to continue with his remarkable outings leading to the final game against Ivory Coast.

    Perhaps Peseiro didn’t observe in the semi-final game when he introduced Chukwueze that the AC Milan FC of Italy player doesn’t like to fall back into the defence to retrieve the ball from the opposition. This tactical deficiency which Chukwueze exhibited provided the Appian Way which Ivory Coast exploited to lift the trophy, instead of Nigeria.

    The man’s style of play was a huge disadvantage for Alex Iwobi and I doubt if he would’ve done the same if Wilfred Ndidi was available. The formation ensured that there was no creativity in the team and the Eagles failed to dominate against most opponents at the tournament. Perhaps it is important to ask Peseiro why he didn’t give Kelechi Iheanacho a first-team role during the competition. If he did, Iheanacho could have provided the defence-splitting passes to free Victor Osimhen from his tight-marking opponents. If Peseiro knew he didn’t need Iheanacho, he should have allowed him to remain in England to recuperate fully instead of making a jest of him with meaningless cameo roles which cost the team heavily.

    Watching the Eagles while I was away on vacation showed clearly that Peseiro wasn’t in charge of selecting players for the team. There appear to be hidden hands that remotely controlled those who played and who didn’t. It simply means that there wasn’t any basic rule to determine who got invited to the Super Eagles during Peseiro’s era.

    Indeed, Peseiro’s handling of Nigeria’s big six players (Osimhen, Lookman, Simon, Troost-Ekong, and Iheanacho) explained why Iwobi was marooned in the midfield with no other creative midfielder opening up space to receive passes to help the team’s attack shoot for goals. I wasn’t, therefore, surprised when Ekong revealed that he wasn’t on speaking terms with a confused Peseiro. Would you blame Ekong for keeping the distance from the Portuguese?

    Peseiro is gone and one must praise him for leaving the job without dragging the NFF to FIFA over his outstanding wages. This writer wants to credit President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for settling all the debts owed to the country’s sportsmen and women who brought honour and won titles from international sporting competitions across the globe.

    This gesture by Tinubu marked the first time in many years that Nigeria participated in soccer competitions without incidents that poured odium on the country. Tinubu crowned this masterstroke by rewarding the country’s contingent to the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations with national honours, cash, and plots of land and houses.

    Little wonder the Portuguese had kind words to say about the Nigerians he worked with in the last 22 months. Indeed, Tinubu changed the narrative from uncouth comments from foreign coaches to songs of praise as they bade goodbye to the job.

    Thank you Jose Peseiro, except that your exit has thrown up another storyline that could destroy what we gained from the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations unless the issue is handled with tact. Peseiro’s exit has created a vacancy that needs to be fixed without rancour. If the NFF feels that former Nigerian international and

     current coach of Enyimba FC of Aba, Finidi George, can do the job, having learned the ropes working with Peseiro, so be it. The Super Eagles is too big a job to be given to coaches without pedigree.

    As a matter of fact, coaches who ‘did well’ handling Nigeria’s age-grade teams in the past did a great disservice to the cradle of the game.  The question I always ask those rooting for these age-grade coaches is for them to explain why the products of the country’s feats of 2013 and 2015 aren’t the ones dominating the senior national team.

    I have seen the 10-man list of Nigerian coaches looking for the Super Eagles job and I feel strongly that there isn’t any need for another round of controversies if the NFF’s original intention of assigning Finidi George to work with Peseiro in the Super Eagles was for him to take charge with the Portuguese’s exit. Super Eagles is Nigeria’s premium brand among our football teams. It should not be left in the hands of coaches who in the last five years have been unemployed by any soccer club or national team. If they were such great coaches, they wouldn’t have been idle in the last five years.

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    Suddenly, those former players who made life for local coaches miserable with their attitude, insolence, and near gangster tendencies each time Nigerian coaches were in charge of the team, are scrambling to handle the Super Eagles.

    Suddenly, those top ex-internationals who openly canvassed for foreign coaches to handle the Super Eagles on grounds of their superior tactics and exposure to the modern tricks in the game, want the job they told the world local coaches were incompetent to handle.

    Suddenly, those who led the star trek of Nigerian analysts to England to interview foreign coaches for the Super Eagles are at the rooftops shouting their voices hoarse for ex-internationals who are Nigerians to be given the job. Just like that? These latter-day advocates for local coaches don’t mind if this thoughtless expedition would cost Nigeria the 2026 World Cup ticket.

    The new mantra for the insistence on having the local coaches handle the Super Eagles rests with the cliché that no country has won the World Cup using foreign coaches. They have forgotten that these countries’ football is being run on autopilot on time-tested programmes which are alluring.

    These soccer buffs won’t tell us how these World Cup winners have developed the game in their polities, such that the turnover of their local coaches is so high that they must move out in droves to practise what they learned.

    These naysayers have refused to tell us if these World Cup winners combed other parts of the world like Nigeria to look for their nationals in the Diaspora to play for the countries of their parent’s birth.

  • Kick in the teeth

    Kick in the teeth

    Believe me, dear reader, on what I want to say. Yes, tears rolled down my cheeks while reading the message sent to my email Monday night, stating that the country’s President,  Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had accepted to release N12 billion to settle all debts owed the country’s sportsmen, sportswomen, officials, coaches and other ancillary staff, who worked their socks wet, representing Nigeria at different sporting competitions across the globe. As I read the story sent through The Nation newspapers, my thoughts ran to the night in Paris in 1998, when Retired Colonel Abdulmumini Aminu cried over the conduct of some Super Eagles players days before Nigeria confronted Denmark in the second round fixture at the France ‘ 98 World Cup.

    Aminu’s reaction was hinged on the players’ insistence that they should be paid upfront $15,000 each before they stepped onto the pitch to honour the Second Round fixture against Denmark. Indeed, the 1998 Super Eagles squad has been the most incorrigible set of stars, yes stars, who knew that they were injured but chose to be in camp to cause confusion there.

    Interestingly, many of those who represented Nigeria at France’s 98 World Cup knew that it was their last chance to play at the Mundial. Rather than bow out with their heads high in glory, they chose to be recalcitrant. It didn’t matter if Nigeria was disgraced. This France ’98 World Cup Eagles would have been the country and Africa’s first team to play at the World Cup final game if only they were all physically fit. Recall that Nigeria beat the dreaded Spanish team 3-2 in the Group’s opening game, making pundits salivate because the bulk of players in the squad were members of the country’s debut World Cup squad in 1994 and those in the now famous Atlanta ’96 Olympic Games’ gold-winning team. The stars were there, but many were injured; some others were no longer motivated to die for Nigeria but chose to fight to collect what the country owed them as allowances and match bonuses from preparatory games. The way they behaved was shameful – absolutely.

    Recall that the late goggled one in the country’s jackboot era had died and the world celebrated the end of a tyrannical reign in Nigeria. The late Emeka Omeruah had to return to Nigeria to get the funds to pay the players upfront before they agreed to play. The players behaved as merchants. Patriotism was thrown into the lagoon. Just a word to them. Pity. The country’s 3-2 victory over Spain ignited the mood in Nigeria. Why the players used the Mundial in France to settle scores with the NFF left much to desire, knowing that many of them were playing for top European clubs and earning mind-boggling weekly wages well over the $15,000 they were agitating for.

    The argument that the players deserve to earn what was promised is good. My quarrel is with how they went about getting their money. It turned out that most of the time, the government’s bureaucracy delayed the payment, not that their entitlements were misappropriated. After all, the NFF key officials dragged to the court in the aftermath of the crises that engulfed Nigeria’s South Africa 2010 World Cup campaign were discharged and acquitted of all the charges levied against them.

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    A situation in which players get paid between $5,000 and $15,000 as match bonuses aside from their other entitlements, yet would want to take a large chunk from the competition’s gate earnings leaves the NFF perpetually broke. We tolerate the players’ idiocy most times like instances where they are given cash before playing games under the guise of motivating them. It is not done anywhere in the world. Would it shock you dear, to know that such cash is never refunded if they lose such failed encounters?

    The perennial feud between the players and those in power truncated Nigerians’ quest for a resounding World Cup performance reminiscent of what happened in 1994 in the United States of America (USA). It accounted for the country’s failure in France. Denmark beat Nigeria 4-1. Many businesses suffered because many forward-looking business outfits looked forward to a ‘revenge’ game between Nigeria and Brazil, two years after the country’s Dream Team 1 beat the Brazilians 4-3 in the golden goal rule at the Atlanta ’96 Olympic Games’ semi-final game.

    Fast forward to another World Cup year in 2002 co-hosted and another bonuses and allowances brouhaha broke out; this time during the Africa Cup of Nations with Nigeria sure of the ticket to Korea/ Japan. This time the feud had a new combatant – the Sports Ministry. The ministry chieftains stood their ground by disbanding the squad after the Nations Cup and constituted a new Super Eagles squad. Many of the country’s big boys, who would have made a difference, were dropped and a  renowned coach, who was a disciplinarian, Adeboye Onigbinde, was appointed to lead the squad to Japan at short notice.

    Again, fast forward to 2010; the Super Eagles qualified for the epochal Africa Mundial hosted by South Africa in 2010 with pomp and ceremony. Of course, Nigeria was returning to the Mundial after an eight-year hiatus and most bookmakers felt we must have learned our lessons from the past mistakes.

    The show of shame during the South Africa 2010 Mundial was such that the team was serving two masters – the NFF which is a body recognised to administer any country’s soccer in line with FIFA’s statutes and a yoyo body called the Presidential Task Force (PTF). Directives were issued at cross purposes and it didn’t come as a surprise that the Eagles exited the competition with nothing to cheer.

    Going to the Brazil 2014 World Cup for the Super Eagles was dogged by intrigues from within the NFF and from the Sports Ministry, leading to the formation of groups who prayed openly for the country’s failure. So, it wasn’t a surprise that the players refused to train for the second-round game against France. The players refused to be persuaded to play unless their outstanding debts were paid.

    A top government official who was in Brazil rushed back to Nigeria and was given $3.8million which the players shared throughout the night before the game against France. The Eagles were beaten 2-0 by the French which didn’t shock anyone close to the squad.

    The country’s campaign at the Russia 2018 World Cup wasn’t any different, except that those agitating for changes at the NFF stuck to their guns. They failed in their quest for changes at the federation’s headquarters in Abuja. The Eagles didn’t do well during the competition despite the presence of good players in the squad.

    It is instructive to reveal here that the troubles that have affected how Nigeria has prosecuted her World Cup games started after that year’s edition of the Africa Cup of Nations. The President’s decision to defray all the debts in the sports sections across the board speaks to the problems which have bedevilled the sector.

    For the first time in decades, the players dressed like Nigerians in one of our national attires. Not in coats of many colours or party and beach wear.

    Garlands for Mr President for restoring peace to the sporting industry. The President’s intervention is the fillip of growth that the sector needs to bring back the country’s sports investors.