Category: Ade Ojeikere

When you see kids of the same age bracket participating in any sport, what strikes you are the younger ones among them whose talent raises the hope of a greater future for watchers of the game. These younger ones tickle your fancy with how they struggle with their playing kits while playing games.  The Italians at the ongoing FIFA U-20 World Cup reminded me of their ages. Nigeria beat Italy 2-0 at the group stage but it was apparent that the Italians were the better side technically, given the way they despatched the Brazilians 4-2 in the first Group D game.

The Flying Eagles bullied the Italians, especially with how we scored the second goal. It was almost the same Nigeria scored her second goal against Argentina. Flying Eagles which beat the Italians are at home while the European kids are improving on their game with every match. The price you pay for fielding adults as kids in a kiddies tournament. Would I be surprised if the Italians get to play in the finals of the World Cup in Argentina? No.

Listening to commentaries during the matches, one is thrilled, informed and educated about the composition of most of the nations who partook in the World Cup and those still there until the end of the competition. The commentators repeatedly give you a brief history of the players particularly those who transited from U-17 to U-20. These commentaries help identify who the young lads, especially those taking after their fathers who are legends of the game.

The beauty about those kids of football stars is that they necessarily didn’t play for the fathers’ clubs, although a few of them did. The simple implication is that there is hardly any club in Europe without thriving soccer clubs or should I say sports for cadets – meaning getting young boys and girls to learn the rudiments of the sport peculiar to where they come from. A few of these soccer clubs also have basketball teams, hockey teams etc using their academies as the foundation to assemble the junior boys and girls for training. These academies strikingly encourage the kids to combine school work with playing the beautiful game, for instance.

The commentators drop the names of the clubs the young boys play for including those who have played for the countries as fringe stars. This kind of reminder helps listeners to realise that such countries have a pool of talents which they identify, nurture, train and expose to big tournaments such as the World Cup. One wasn’t shocked to hear that one of the Nigerians plays for Yum Yum FC. The cynical laughter among the commentators told the story. It could have been that the commentators typical of their jobs would have fact-checked Yum Yum FC and discovered that such a name is strange to the annals of Nigeria football.  Did I hear you say what was it about, dear reader? As for this writer, Yum Yum FC has come to stay. It is the only good thing about Nigeria’s expedition to Argentina.

The Nigerians and the Brazilians are out of the competition. Still, my appetite to continue watching the games arose from the clinical manner in which debutants in the competition, Israel ran the rule over the junior samba Boys. The Israelis came back from a goal down twice before clinching the win with final scores of 3-2. It was a game filled with drama with the theatrics getting to its crescendo, six minutes to the end of the game which ran into extra time. The rookies from Israel had a penalty in their favour. Twice the kick was missed which incidentally was missed by two different players. The two boys who missed the penalty kicks were naive and couldn’t control their nerves. Will you blame them? No way.

On Thursday evening the Israelis showed clearly by their ball distribution and cohesive style of play that beating Brazil wasn’t a fluke when they held the Uruguayans to a barren draw in the first half. Of course, the Uruguayans raised the game to ward off the Israelis’ attacking forays otherwise they would have been eliminated.  When the Uruguayans scored the goal that separated both countries in the 61st minute, they ensured that they blocked off the Israelis with every Uruguayan on the pitch covering the spaces knowing that their opponent on the night have a rich history of cancelling slim leads such as the 1-0 difference.

Read Also: FIFA U-20 World Cup: Flying Eagles didn’t disgrace Nigeria, says NFF

Definitely, European clubs’ scouts enjoyed every moment that the Israelis played knowing that they won’t be paying too much to lure them to the European leagues. Again, this new squad member has raised the pool of talents available to the head coach of Israel’s senior team. He also doesn’t have to persuade any big star to play for the country. Mention must be made of the witty decision of the Israeli FA chiefs to look for a coach, Ofir Haim with a good pedigree in handling club players to pick a good team at the cadet level.  Some food for thought for NFF board members on how to recruit coaches for Nigeria’s soccer teams. The tardy idea of recycling failed coaches by the NFF should be stopped forthwith.

Coach Ofir Haim has opened a new vista for the game. It wouldn’t be inappropriate to ask Ofir Haim to graduate with his boys to the senior level, especially as the next edition of the senior World Cup is just a few years away. Besides, Ofir Haim could also assemble a slightly older team by infusing into this squad much older boys who qualify to participate in the football event in 2024 in Paris. The prize for hard work and proper planning, if you ask. For all that anyone would say, Ofir Haim is a World Cup coach and is available to the highest bidder.  Indeed, the essence of the FIFA age competitions is to take the game to the grassroots to occupy the youth and take them off the social vices.

Again, the transition of players of one lower age grade to the bigger boys group fulfils one of FIFA’s goals and objectives. The Israelis have a future. What they need is exposure to competitions and getting to believe in themselves. Certainly, Israel isn’t a rookie in the game at least in the U-20 category. Congratulations welcome to the club.

With Uruguay playing in the final game of the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup against Italy in Argentina on Sunday, the Uruguayans can heave a sigh of relief that their ageing senior soccer team can be re-energised with some of the emerging stars in this U-20 side. The Uruguayans will play in the final against Italy, with the junior Azurris beating South Korea 2-1.

I don’t intend to write anything about how Nigeria fared in Argentina nor do I want to praise or chastise anybody for his role with the team.

In the last week, there has been nothing outstanding to celebrate in Nigeria’s sports. Sports have been taken to the courts while the participants wait in abeyance. Of course, the scheduled competitions must hold whether Nigeria is ready or not. Unfortunately, we remain a country without a football calendar which makes the game rudderless. For us to have a seamless soccer season, the organisers should develop a calendar that can’t be tampered with.

Nigeria is a huge joke. We expect the world to wait for us to wake up from our slumber. Our copycat attitude limits our scope, leaving us with the tardy option of cutting corners. Sadly, things don’t work that way. Nations strive to improve on areas where they have a comparative advantage over others as a way of measuring their growth ratio.

In our deep sleep, we conjure hallucinatory images of successes in soccer competitions built on quicksand which we expect to become reality. No way. Planning is central to growth in any human endeavour with the basics left in the hands of experts to decipher. These experts’ submissions serve as the yardstick to measure growth and developments in such an industry as sports. It isn’t enough to ape what others have done in developing their games. In taking a critical look at how others make things look easy, we should appreciate the urgent need for specialisation among personnel in key areas of the sport – football.

What specialisation means is that not everyone who played the game at whatever level in the past can become a coach without being trained in the trade. It is the reason our younger boys leave the country for Europe and hit their peak in amazing fashion. Whereas our players have improved in their game in geometrical projection, our improperly trained coaches have grown in arithmetic progression. The lacuna between our players’ development and their coaches chiefly explains the string of losses when they handle our national teams to international competitions.

The game of football is dynamic with its rules fluid and training methods reviewed with every competition. There are several refresher courses before major competitions where renowned coaches share their experiences with upcoming coaches. The fallouts of these courses rub off on the attendees who transfer the knowledge acquired to their different countries. Serious football countries take further steps to routinely invite these renowned managers to visit their countries to train and retrain their domestic league coaches.

The ripple effect of these periodic courses is that countries identify the models they want their teams to play and make them their focal points with every training session. Indeed, it is through these classified courses that serious-minded football nations grade their coaches in line with their scale of preferences. Since these countries don’t joke with the foundations or should I say the cradle of their soccer, special attention is taken to separate the coaches with an inclination towards handling rookies to identify, nurture and exposed the new lads.

Modern-day coaching is about cones, dummies, and other devices found in the club’s gymnasium used to keep players fit. Match preparations are about tactics and roles assigned to special players based on tapes of the opposition’s style of play charted for easy explanation. As matches progress the better side is known through its depth in talents and how the coaches deploy them in his line ups to achieve the desired results.

It is from these tactical and technical sessions that countries pick their different coaches, not the guesswork methods being adopted by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). Nigeria’s average performance at the Africa U17 tournament can be traced to the absence of a credible nursery or academy as some others call it. It is the hub of most nations. If the Golden Eaglets players are at home in a competition that they dominated in the past, hold the NFF responsible. Even the simplest of tasks which is to standardise the workings of the nurseries and academies to eliminate quacks, especially the shylock agents and scouts has been left unattended to. Most people have challenged the NFF chiefs to regulate the nurseries and face the backlash. Hello, NFF! Please take the plunge.

Each time we prosecute our football matches in the last two decades with mostly the ”foreign legion”, I wonder if our soccer administrators appreciate the damage they do to the ”beautiful” game. Our administrators see soccer development from the prism of participating in competitions outside the country. No programmes to catch the talents young, train and retrain the coaches for a workable template. For them, success is winning trophies, even if the players come from the moon. No surprise the dearth of competition here.

We have relied so much on the ”foreign legion” that it doesn’t matter if kids from Europe populate our age-grade teams. We must not win age-grade competitions. We should de-emphasise winning, even though it is the ultimate. We should insist on getting kids who can return to the grassroots to serve as icons for others to emulate. Otherwise, we may get the ”foreign legion” as sports administrators to drive home the point.

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 bases for storing the data of those discovered. Such information helps 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 evolving.

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, Ikponwonsa Ikponwonsa in 1988 as a 12-year old, cannot be Obaseki  Idahosa 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.

Timelines are usually introduced to avoid laziness and also as wake-up calls to those on the lines of production to be up to the tasks.

Indeed, those who administer our football think that administering the game successfully is akin to asking an innocent kid to tear out the sheet of a raffle draw ticket. Far from it.

The real enemies of football in Nigeria are those who administer the game here and their acolytes, including those sit-tight administrators across the 774 Local Government Areas. Indeed, there are State FA chairmen and members who have spent between 12 years and 28 years in these positions. They are the viruses that have stunted the growth and development of soccer in the country to date.

One wasn’t, therefore, shocked when the NFF executive board members met in Abuja last month and ruled among other laughable decisions that the board of the Interim Management Committee (IMC) should be reconstituted with a deadline of 30 days for its implementation, it was clear that there was certainly some kind of hidden agenda to clear the deck of the IMC members whose pronouncements in recent times have effectively addressed some the problems facing the domestic league.

How the board members forgot that the IMC started with a timeline which was extended by the NFF to run for the duration of the league which they began showed the depth of folly in the federation. Not one member remembered an earlier decision to extend the IMC’s tenure which sought to compliment the applause from Nigerians over IMC’s good works and the noticeable improvements in the domestic game.

The executive board issued a communiqué which was the seal of approval to their kamikaze decision. It is clear that the NFF members do not discuss the minutes of their previous meetings to refresh their minds on what was discussed and the decisions taken. If they did, they wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves. It glaringly showed a failure of leadership in the executive. What do they really discuss?

Like a thief at night, the federation in another communiqué following the hue and cry from Nigerians acknowledged the tenure extension which they gave earlier. This writer wasn’t impressed when the federation announced the composition of its Disciplinary and Appeals Committees, with mostly those who have been in those committees in the past. Same as the same, no thanks to a lamentation of one of those losing politicians.

The Appeals Committee met last week and produced a document which threw out most of the decisions taken by the disciplinary committee, chiefly those involving Wikki Tourists and Remo Stars. What exposed the hand of injustice by the Appeals Committee was its decision to suspend the catalyst of the brouhaha. This Appeals Committee brought forth a needless comparison between assault and a tap on the chest of the referee who refused to come onto the field of play, following what he faced in the 15 minutes the referees spent in the dressing room.

Read Also: Fit-again Jamilu Collins hails NFF, Peseiro, Eagles’ team-mates

Sadly, this Appeals Committee is populated by referees some of whom have been battered by irate fans of clubs. These battered referees have forgotten their bitter experiences. Otherwise, the question to ask them is if the tapping of a referee in his line of office is justifiable. Have the former referees in the Appeals Committee forgotten so soon that the tasks of securing the stadium where games are played before, during and after matches is the prerogative of the hosting clubs, not the host’s State FAs?

Are the former referees in the Appeals Committee saying they aren’t familiar with such despicable behavioural patterns by overzealous home teams’ officials when they were still in active practice? Where is it in the law books it is justifiable for the home team’s official to visit the referee’s dressing rooms at halftime? By the admittance of the committee that the home official erred and his subsequent suspension, does it not suggest to them that the home club should be responsible for the misdemeanour of its staff? Or are the Appeals Committee’s members saying that the home side’s official was going to serve the referees food or drinks? What happened to the stadium’s stewards? Shouldn’t it be the duty of stewards specifically assigned to the dressing room?

Dear Appeals Committee, when somebody taps your chest under any kind of circumstance, how would you describe his action, especially if such a person isn’t your mutual friend? Is it right for anyone to tap his fellow being on his chest for no reason? Assaults start with a tap either vicious or gentle, dear Appeals Committee members. If what happened to the referees inside the dressing room was just a tap on the chest, why did all four referees refuse to come out to handle the second half of the game? Tap indeed. The Appeals Committee members have forgotten that the referees are human beings, fathers, brothers, nephews, grandfathers and uncles who are knowledgeable to recognise threats to their lives.

I’ve decided to interrogate this Appeals Committee’s judgment because in my days at Thisday newspaper and National Interest newspaper. I condemned the brutal treatment meted on at least three of the members of this committee by club vagabond. In fact, I got the telephone numbers of these two former referees when I called them to narrate their close shave.

Need I say that I was a pioneer member of the defunct member of IMB headed by the late Chief Oyuki Jackson Obaseki aka Moving Train? It is good to give this perspective to the discussion before one is accused of doing others’ bidding.

The Appeal Committee ought to have known that the referee is the sole judge and custodian of time. The referee’s decisions are final, especially in Nigeria’s arena which doesn’t operate with the Video  Assistant Referee (VAR) gadgets which in climes where are utilised to interrogate the referee’s decisions on the field of play.

The home club’s official’s presence in the dressing attests to the fact that he was found in an unauthorised place. If yes, going by the official whose suspension was upheld, then a case of encroachment was also established. One would, therefore, want to know the committee’s decision on that issue of encroachment. Did the Appeals Committee consider that fact such an intruder in the referee’s dressing room could easily have had a gun (God forbid) hidden underneath his coat of clothes to kill the referees, if the access route was so porous? Unfortunately, the victims of this misplacement of justice are scared of challenging these types of decisions.

Is anyone shocked by the way players, coaches and referees were beaten groggy by Gombe fans? Soldiers drafted to restore peace were marvellous, going by the accounts of the players and coaches. Gory pictures of what happened in Gombe litter social media. Pictures from the dastardly acts in Gombe revealed that one of the players disfigured one of the referees with punches. Would this committee also ask for evidence of how the referee was beaten to pulp, weeks after incident? What is clear is that until  referees are killed as a fallout of mayhem in a stadium fracas, government won’t pay attention to this time bomb. Trust government to constitute  a judicial panel to investigate a matter that had been begging of attention. Must a fan die for action to be taken? You tell me.

When the employer claims ignorance about the terms of the contract of his prominent employee so brazenly, it is either he is being mischievous or that he has timidly surrendered his responsibilities. It is expected that this employer whose signature approves payment of such an employee’s monthly wages should know at the tip of his fingers everything about his critical members of staff.
Yes, the best way to elicit a diabolical response to probing questions on Super Eagles manager Jose Peseiro, is to ask if he had been paid. Or for you to insinuate the number of months’ salaries the Portuguese are being owed? You only get to know about Peseiro’s whereabouts when Nigeria has a game or matches one month away from the first encounter. Possibly his backers would sneak into the social media Peseiro’s pictures watching prospective Super Eagles players though the domestic leagues’ matches on the other hand are in full stream. The excuse before now by most of our foreign coaches was that the league hadn’t begun and it was admissible. Not anymore.
What Nigerians have in their hands now is a man who earns $70,000 monthly and can’t be given the rules on how we want him to work. He spends close to ten months at home in Europe, and visits Nigeria for a few days, perhaps to struggle for one month’s salary after the assignment rather than reside in the country to fish out budding stars who abound in the 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs). Indeed, Peseiro’s itinerary doesn’t change.
Peseiro arrives in Abuja seven days before a home game with the Super Eagles team list neatly folded inside his breast pocket unchallenged or should one say the list isn’t interrogated. He walks through immigration with a motley crowd of Portuguese who he claims are his technical assistants including his biological son. Wonderful. Still stunned? Don’t because if the game is home fixtures, Peseiro and his ‘mechanics’ are ushered into the hotel by their Nigerian counterparts who struggle to outrun the other with most of them heading towards Peseiro to pick up his luggage and head for his hotel room. The Portuguese also enjoys the luxury of meeting his players in the countries where they have matches mostly for international friendly games against European nations.
Back to the home matches. Peseiro sounds his whistle on the Mondays before the weekend game only to discover that only five foreign-based players are in the camp. Of the five in camp, only one is an exchange player, meaning that the bulk of the teams were yet to report or were busy in other cities in the country attending to pressing personal matters including cutting marketing endorsements. Will you blame them? The resultant effect is the full compliments of the country’s big sneak into the camp two days before the match. This without any doubt is an invitation to anarchy which happens during the game – Nigeria gets beaten by Guinea Bissau in Abuja. The buck-passing begins. The fans are angry. They vent their anger by destroying the few facilities inside the MKO Abiola Stadium, Abuja as we witnessed when Ghana’s Black Stars qualified for the Qatar 2022 World Cup.
In other climes, the federation’s chieftains sit down with the country’s technical crew to review the game to find out what went wrong and how to plug the loopholes noticed during such games. It is during such meetings that the coaches are told to sit up or walk away from the job, having been given all that they asked for by the federation. Those players who didn’t distinguish themselves or those who didn’t have sufficient commitment to the games are told to be dropped for the more serious-minded players who would be ready to fight for their fatherland. Of course, latecomers are reprimanded with the warning to be dropped in the future no matter their stature in the squad.
Not so for the NFF men who roll the sheet of evaluation over by blaming the stadium’s pitches, and late release of cash to prosecute games even after they told us that they are a certain percentage solvent. The truth is that the NFF must inform Peseiro not to invite more than 17 foreign-based players to the Super Eagles’ camp if they hope to bring down the cost of hosting and attending international matches. And that can also be enforced when the list of players to be invited for particular games is discussed with the NFF’s Technical Committee members who must be eminently qualified for such assignments.
The NFF needs to have a functional Technical Department where matches involving Nigerians in European clubs are recorded, discussed and tabulated to guide them when discussing the list of players to be picked for assignments. It amounts to a failure of leadership for NFF to release a list of players where three to four of them are injured. It is even more disturbing when players haven’t kicked the ball for the European teams for over ten to 12 weeks, yet they are listed for the country’s matches. It smacks of high-level fraud when those kinds of players arrive in the country only to pull out of the game after one training session.
When a player doesn’t play regularly for his club, it means that he is either injured or has lost form. Such players should never be invited to the Super Eagles camp. Only an unqualified manager would invite half-fit or injured players to camp. It shows clearly that he was sleeping on duty while the matches involving Nigerian players were being played. No doubt he can only watch one game at a time. But the manager can log on to YouTube to watch the games. Besides, why does a manager have technical assistants who don’t watch live games or/and even help their boss to monitor their players on YouTube? The NFF needs an ultra-modern technical department fitted with state-of-the-art equipment to make coaches and federation’s existing problems of picking only fit players to prosecute Nigeria’s matches.
It is only when the foreign-based players are effectively monitored that the NFF can achieve its mandate to Super Eagles coaches to include 25 per cent of home-based players on their lists. Time was when the argument in favour of recruiting foreign coaches had to do with their firm and zero tolerance for indiscipline. Not anymore in Nigeria because of the calibre of tacticians, we have employed. This set of Super Eagles does what they cherish. The coaches virtually worship them, especially when most of the matches they have played were prosecuted on credit. The talk in football circles alleged that the players were being owed 19-match bonuses. My problem with the players and coaches is that they don’t squeal to reveal that they have been paid.
Law and order have broken down in Super Eagles camp. You can see the players roaming around the corridors as late as midnight. Players’ hangers-on litter the hotel with many of them residing in the same hotel with the team. Of course, the players pay for such rooms which serve as distractions.

Pay any Nigerian professional $70,000 monthly and see the quality of the job he would do. Pay this Nigerian $20,000 for every assignment he executes in the line of duty, then you would witness incredible turnovers on investments in that enterprise. The Nigerian’s can-do spirit is unrivalled, especially if he or she is as motivated as we have seen with the foreigners we have employed to train the Super Eagles  – most times journeymen without the pedigree and tactical savvy to drive our national soccer teams to glory.

I am an unapologetic backer of very good foreign coaches for our national teams because very few good Nigerian coaches don’t see coaching the national team as serious business. They are pushed by the head of pressure groups to accept the job without having plans to weather the storm for the duration of their contract. Nigerian coaches are bad negotiators of deals, unlike their foreign counterparts who capitalise on the settings on the ground to ask for their ridiculous wages. Except the NFF officials work in conjunction with the IMC chiefs to start the process of grading the ranks of the domestic coaches, they won’t be able to negotiate juicy deals.

In other climes, Grade A coaches’ remunerations are provocative with all details spelt out to clubs in need of their service. Of course, these coaches know their worth and wouldn’t bend over for less. Grading of the domestic coaches would help improve the quality of coaching since the Grade A would routinely be exposed to refresher courses and retraining on the modern tricks of the game which evolves monthly. In Nigeria, anyone connected with the game in any form in the last two decades can ultimately coach our national teams with the right contacts at the top. Hence we find it much easier to pander towards foreign coaches to cover up any flaw. Sadly, we end up recruiting Lilliputians or otiose coaches.

The NFF should headhunt a domestic league coach for the Super Eagles using the indices of the past where head coaches of the local teams are qualified tacticians as we did in the Adegboye Onigbinde’s, Alabi Aissien’s, Monday Sinclair’s etc era. These aforementioned coaches did well using the domestic league. They got selected to join the national teams based on their effort in the domestic league not by complimentary cards signed by men at the top. The league was exciting then although the Nigerian economy was buoyant and robust such that players from other parts of the African continents made the Nigeria league a Mecca of sorts for greener pastures. Need I mention the names of some foreign players who in the past played for Nigerian clubs but for space constraints? However, players like Edward Ansah, Lotus Boateng, John Benson, Raymond Kwakokon; Mark Kukula, etc were some of the prominent Ghanaians who played for Nigerian clubs in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The proliferation of training points in Nigeria is laughable as such bodies’ programmes are not sanctioned by FIFA and CAF. Owners of such miserable programmes need to be taught and aren’t eminently qualified to run such courses in their centres. NFF needs to standardise such coaching programmes in a bid to rid the places of quacks. Coaches are as good as the schools which produced them. Is anyone shocked that Nigerian coaches aren’t flooding Europe as the players for greener pastures?

If we don’t regularise certain components which make the game exciting to watch, Nigeria’s ranking in world soccer would continue to plummet. We need to establish a style of play unique to us. And it can only happen if we can headhunt the domestic coaches we want to appoint into all the cadres of the game.

Unfortunately, most Nigerian coaches are regrettably very naive. They have failed to put their demands to make their marks on the negotiation table before appending their signatures on contractual papers. Why our coaches repeatedly make these mistakes baffles this writer, especially ex-internationals who played the game in big European clubs. Could it be that they didn’t sign contractual papers as players? I don’t think so. No European club would sign any player without fulfilling all the requirements for such a player to play in the European leagues. Of course, such matters are documented, a task handled by the legal departments of such clubs.

A classic example is a yet-to-be-confirmed report linking Jose Mourinho to a Saudi Arabian Club for a whopping 120 million pounds sterling for two years. Mourinho is able to attract this type of offer because of the level and class he has established for himself.

Again, Zinedine Zidane, Pep Guardiola, and Carlo Ancelotti, for instance, have established themselves as Grade A coaches and would not want to coach in leagues that can’t match their reputation. How did they get there? Training and retraining; including personal development on the job. Which Nigerian coach has empowered himself to get to this level?

I’m sure that our players, given the way they were headed to Europe from their local clubs here may have relied on their agents’ lawyers or those given to them by the clubs pro bono in the course of negotiations. Otherwise, how did such a player who is now a coach forget to get the services of a lawyer to intercede for them in the negotiations with a chronic debtor body as ours? Need I also state that these European clubs have players’ unions and coaches’ bodies to intervene when negotiations go awry?

Clubs in Europe are administered professionally with every facet of the game handled by different people. So, the exciting aspect of signing any player in Europe is when he or she is brought in front of the clubs’ information rooms to sign the dotted lines of his or her contract before the prying eyes of the media and the world watching on television, an event which is beamed live across the globe. Why Nigerian coaches don’t like to formalise the jobs with documents signed by lawyers beats this writer hollow.

Soccer-crazy countries in Brazil for the FIFA U-17 World Cup are not there essentially to lift the trophy. They are there with the products from a structured plan to spot talents early. No kamikaze approach. Players being paraded by these countries are from renowned academies whose duty is to discover, nurture and expose kids from around them to play on such big stages. These nations’ nationals don’t have to ask their neighbours who the players are during games.

The beauty of this system is that it also provides a platform for coaches to be trained and retrained on how to handle kids until adulthood. In fact, many of these coaches end up specialising in training young ones. They won’t be persuaded to handle clubs since they enjoy doing the job. It is, therefore, easy for these countries to name age-grade teams’ coaches, not by guesswork or sentiments but by their achievements in the local competitions in such countries. This academy system ensures that players’ data are accurate. They are stored and used in subsequent editions as the players grow.

Without sounding derogatory, if the likes of Peseiro, Genot Rohr, etc, were Grade A coaches, they would not have accepted any offer to come to Africa to train their national teams. Besides, no country will allow her super-grade coaches to be exported to other countries, especially Africa, for obvious reasons.

Perhaps, Clemence Westerhof, Johannes Bonfere, and a few other European coaches who came to Africa and did well are an exception to this rule. Also, it could well be that they enjoyed the kind of privileges that Westerhof was exposed to in Nigeria by having a personal link to the Second in Command in the country- the late Augustus Aikhomu, Nigeria’s former military Vice President.

Will it shock any football follower that the Super Eagles dropped in the latest rankings released by FIFA? Nigeria was 35th in the previous rankings. However, they are now the 40th-best team in the World. In Africa, the Super Eagles are now sixth. They are behind the 2022 World Cup semi-finalists in Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt.

Morocco’s last victory against Brazil did not make any change in their ranking, as they sit 11th in the World, according to FIFA’s latest ranking released on Thursday. Can’t the NFF chieftains see that the game here is headed for the ditch if the body fails to address issues concerning our national teams’ coaches whether local or foreign? No hope? You tell me.

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is gradually becoming a colony of jesters with their decisions and utterances on critical national issues. Otherwise, how do they want the world to perceive them with their pronouncement through a press release that the Nigerians attached to the Super Eagles would take their turns whenever the team has any kind of game? Where in this universe do you rotate coaches for national team jobs? Shouldn’t the Super Eagles have Nigerian assistants who should be understudying that Portuguese? Who does that under the guise that the federation is cash-strapped?

Are these two coaches not their employees bound by a contract with expiry dates and duties assigned to them? Where in their contract is it stated that they would function in the team’s technical matters on a rotational basis? Isn’t it a breach of the terms of the contract? Or is the NFF hiding the fact that the contractual agreements haven’t been fully sealed? Are they not aware that these coaches have their deals with them, a copy or copies that NFF also have? Why is it that it took the NFF the blink of an eye to issue messages to the Nigerians while casting an indulgent eye on the Portuguese assistants working with Jose Peseiro in the team? In the message, the federation forgot to tell the coaches if their letters of appointment were ready. Of course, it doesn’t matter if the federation owes the coaches their wages for nine months. After all, as the players, these coaches have in the past been Nigeria’s sports ambassadors – or should I say, patriots.

NFF men shouldn’t browbeat Nigerians with the illusory arrangement where Peseeiro is paying the wages of his assistants. Isn’t it very outrageous for the NFF to pay the Portuguese $70,000 monthly, yet when the board decided to cut costs, it is the wages of the Nigerians which is paltry that should be cut? Isn’t it incredulous that Peseiro has his son as one of his assistants and it suits the federation not to raise issues about it? Who cursed Nigeria like this? Are these Portuguese fluent in the English language? Why would the NFF allow Peseiro to have three assistants while Nigerians are made onlookers?

The question next would be who these Nigerians are. George Finidi and Ike Shorunmu were told via WhatsApp messages to alternate their jobs with those who weren’t pronounced for the positions when it was first announced last year by the Amaju Pinnick-led board? The simple deduction from this terrible decision is that the NFF has no succession plan for the Super Eagles in which Nigerians would be at the helm of the team’s technical crew. Pity.

Finidi and Shorunmu are some of our best exports to Europe aside from the fact that they are World Cup stars with Finidi scoring crucial World Cup goals for Nigeria. This is why the world soccer nations laugh at us when such laughable decisions are taken. This is how we always belittle our heroes before Lilliputian coaches from Europe.

Can you imagine the NFF justifying the replacement of Shorunmu with a coach in the U-20 side? Even if the federation wants to drop Shorunmu, is it when Nigeria has a game within such a week? Or is it because the opposition is Guinea-Bissau? If Finidi and Shorunmu had been given their letters of appointment, would they have done that? After all, the new board persuaded them to tarry a while to allow them to find their feet in the governance of the federation. Is this the reward for their understanding, dear NFF board members?

What this bestial act has shown is that Nigeria’s most prestigious team, the Super Eagles has no domestic coach worthy of any position. Does it also mean that foreigners are running our most extensive team? What happens when Peseiro’s contract expires in the next two months? Is it then NFF would be talking afresh for coaches to handle the team? How do the NFF men expect the players to respect these coaches, having seen how they were treated like orphans?

NFF should wake up to the reality that no country’s football development is measured by the number of foreign-based players in such a country’s senior soccer team. Rather, the measurement is done by the number of new talents produced from the grassroots of such countries. No country’s soccer grows when she shops for younger and already exposed players who lived all their lives in Europe and The Diaspora.

Any country without thriving nurseries and academies to discover, nurture, and expose the talents across the grassroots areas, in Nigeria’s case 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) shouldn’t expect growth in the country. It explains the penchant for parading over-age players in age-grade competitions. Academies cannot thrive when there aren’t school sports tournaments with the different State governments establishing a synergy between their individual sports councils and the state’s ministry of education. Schools are the key to ensuring that the growth recorded is enduring and productive.

Already, Nigeria’s U-20 side though slated to play at the World Cup in Indonesia later in the year, is a sham with the coaches unable to identify young boys of true school age to give the country quality representation in Indonesia. As for the U-23 side, they would be taught lessons on how to play youth football next week Tuesday in Conakry. The implication is that Nigeria’s stable for youth footballers has been shattered by visionless coaches who NFF men expect should give out what they don’t have during training with our players.

The first advantage of having nurseries or academies is that such schools must have teachers either Physical and Health experts trained in top-rated schools and regular coaches whose speciality would essentially be youth development. Without properly trained experts, the nurseries would just be a training ground for anybody to recreate than for the kids in the LGAs to ventilate their energy towards sporting activities and shirk the societal vices – crime, drugs, banditry etc.

The irritating aspect of the flaws inherent with the NFF is that the board members thrive in celebrating pyrrhic victories such as those against Guinea Bissau, with due respect. In Nigeria’s heyday, a second-string Super Eagles would have battered the Wild Dogs of Guinea Bissau with goals because the players would be motivated by the huge dollars the big boys earn while playing. Gone are those. Such weary matches are being played by our armada of stars in Europe. Who cares if Nigeria beats Guinea-Bissau? If we don’t beat the Wild Dogs silly with goals aplenty, we have no business calling Nigeria a world power in football.

If we have learned our lessons from the past events, then Peseiro should be seen around league venues monitoring matches to pick future Super Eagles from the home-grown players. Any coach who needs to be prompted to stay in Nigeria to train our boys should be shown the exit door.

We have the best opportunity to change how we do things, having not qualified for the Qatar 2022 World Cup and these changes should include how to generate cash to prosecute the campaigns without relying wholly on the government. Corporate sponsorship of our football would come when our organisations learn how to account properly for what they received. Corporate cash isn’t freebies. Rather it’s the cash of shareholders who need to know what their money was used for. Absolutely.