Erstwhile co-ordinator of the Super Eagles, Sumonu Bello-Osagie (SBO), believed the non-qualification of the national team for what would have been her seventh FIFA World Cup appearance in Qatar, could be a blessing in disguise, adding the rank and file of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) should be revamped as a way forward to greater things.
The attention of the whole world was yesterday fixed for the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre where the Official Draws for Qatar 2022 World Cup was held for the 32 qualified teams sans Nigeria following the shock elimination by Ghana on Tuesday.
“My view regarding our non-qualification for Qatar 2022 and particularly the match that was played between Nigeria and Ghana , was a national embarrassment,” SBO, one of the unseen hands that assisted the Super Eagles towards a glorious outing at USA 1994 World Cup, told NationSport from his base in New York. But the failure to qualify for Qatar 2022 is also a blessing in disguise. It is an opportunity for us to look back and reflect upon our strategy book that we used when we had great results in football from the 1970s ,1980s and 1990s.”
There is always a sense of Déjà vu as far as the 1990s is concerned following the stellar performances of the Super Eagles that culminated into the historic qualification for the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 1994 as well as winning the African Cup of Nations for only the second time in the country’s football history at Tunisia 1994.
This was followed with winning Africa’s first soccer Gold medal by a nucleus of the USA’1994 squad two years later at Atlanta 1996.
“ The 1990s was a great time for Nigerian football,” recalled SBO.“We had a great man, Dutch coach Clemens Westerhof who lived in Nigeria and was constantly going around the domestic league in order to recruit players for the national team.
“ That was how he was able to discovered a lot of talents including the likes of Daniel Amokachi, Finidi George, Nwankwo Kanu and several others.
“ The Nigerian league of those days is like the English Premiership with the stadium always full to capacity but what has happened to Nigeria league and the management of NFF?
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“ What strategy do we have in place today in order to discover talented new players for the national team because as they say, charity starts from the home? But home many home-based talents can we find in the national team today.
“With a very strong league, we can be able to discover new talents and we won’t be desperately looking for players from the Diaspora all the time in a country with almost 200 million people.”
The versatile SBO with diverse interest that cut through sports, entertainment and diplomacy opined that the way forward for the Super Eagles on one part is recruitment of ‘strong , talented and reliable’ players from the domestic league hence the Nigeria Professional Football league (NPFL) must be retool.
“ They said a masquerade must dance at home before he goes outside,” SBO, a scion of late Balogun of Benin Muslims, Chief Bello-Osagie, equally explained.“ It’s about time the NFF and NPFL to come together and see how we can build the domestic league back in the days.
“ We just can’t be looking for the easy way by sourcing for just any players from Europe after all, a local today will become an international player tomorrow if he is well groomed.
“Nigeria can easily have two strong or three strong national teams easily because of the talent we have in our country; so it is important for us to go back and try as much as possible to look back to open our winning book established by great coaches who had helped us in the past,” he noted.
Back to the crux of the matter, SBO reckoned that it’s not enough to sack the entire Super Eagles’ coaching crew in order to gloss over the failure to qualify for the historic first FIFA World Cup in the Middle East, adding the leadership of the NFF are also guilty in a large way hence the need for maximum consequence.
“ I agree that the first casualty when you have a result like this is the technical crew and that is why I’m not surprised to hear that coach Austin Eguavoen and his crew had been sacked,” SBO continued.
“ From my past experiences, I know a lot of things must have happened behind the scenes and sometimes the technical crew might not be able to voice out.
“ It was also out there that there was some interference by the NFF top management in the selection of the team , that is totally unacceptable.
“There is no need to lose sleep over that rather the NFF president (Amaju Pinnick) and his board should do us a favour and exit the stage so that we can start from the scratch.
“ We need a total haul but not a cosmetic style of sacrificing some players and that is not how to rebuild; we need to rebuild right from the scratch to the top.
“ It is unfortunate that most of the players we have today in the national team don’t even know the history of Nigerian football and the responsibility that goes with wearing the green-white-green jerseys.