Tag: AFCON

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.