Tag: Brazil 2014

Since the draws of the 2014 World Cup were made last week, one has watched in awe the way we seem to have “qualified” for the second round without kicking a ball. No problem with being optimistic, but that is where the Super Eagles’ wahala begins.

Anytime the Eagles are tipped to win matches with aplomb, they totter. But when faced with daunting tasks, they excel. It is instructive to note the Bosnia-Herzegovina is rated 33rd in the world. It means they are better than us in FIFA’s ranking. We are rated ahead of Iran, yet the technical savvy of their coach Querioz is awesome, given the fact that he was deputy to the king-of-the-dug Sir Alex Ferguson. That is not to say that Stephen Keshi cannot match him since we have better players. After all, it is the players who will deliver, not the coaches.

Visualising where we would be at the end of the first round in Brazil, my mind went to the forthcoming Glo-CAF Africa Footballer of the Year Award. I sighed, knowing that it offers the best chance for us to reinvent our football. In the past, the award could be termed our birthright.

I saw Emmanuel Emenike being crowned the winner. I shouted ‘no’. What happened to John Mikel Obi? In figuring if I was in a trance or sleep walking, an inner voice asked what I would do if Vincent Enyeama is crowned the winner. Confused, I said: “Enyeama ke? How can that be? How can the Israeli league be pitched against the most popular league in the world? Shouldn’t exploits in the most prestigious UEFA Champions League and the Europa League rank higher than exploits in other competitions?” It dawned on me that I had no say in the matter. Voting is done by coaches, club captains and top football experts.

January 9, 2014 will be a watershed for the game here. There will be dead pan silence when the compere opens his mouth to announce the 2012/2013 soccer season’s Africa Footballer of the Year.

Pointers to who the eventual winner would be don’t favour the yearning of Nigerians to have their own mount the rostrum as the winner. If history is anything to go by, then Cote d’Ivoire’s Yaya Toure looks like the odds-on-favourite to nick. The 2012/2013 British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) Africa Footballer of the Year winner is Toure. He was also shortlisted for the 2012/2013 Ballon d’Or Award, until the list was pruned to three. These feats usually translate to winning the Africa Footballer of the Year Award. I hope not this year. I digress!

Picking a Nigerian from the four-man (John Mikel Obi, Emmanuel Emenike, Ahmed Musa and Vincent Enyeama) pack will serve as the impetus to drive others in the Super Eagles’ squad to produce their best at the Mundial.

It would further boost our game, if another Nigerian quartet gets listed for the Glo-CAF Africa Footballer of the Year for 2013/14 season. We need to scratch our heads to remember the last time Nigerians made the roll call for the best player in Africa back-to-back. If that happens, then the rebuilding by Stephen Keshi would be worth the efforts to galvanise the Eagles.

The Nigerian fights for his soul when he/she has his/her back on the wall. And it is this Spartan spirit that we need to become the first African side to qualify for the semi-finals. It must be said that at the semi-finals, anything is possible especially if the competition’s Cinderella team is not Nigeria. If this happens, it means that the world would behold a new winner outside the intimidation league of Brazil, Spain, Germany, France, Italy etc. Our football needs this fillip to measure our growth in the game as we prepare for the daunting but achievable task of shocking the world in Brazil.

Going to the World Cup has been a hectic assignment for Nigeria but a piece of cake for others because of the inherent structures. Elsewhere, governance is a continuum, with everyone knowing what to do at the appropriate time.

Here, we do things on our hunch. We are proponents of quick fixes, with most of our administrators thinking through their pockets. For others, anything without their inputs isn’t done well. And such has been the problem with NFF’s preparations for the World Cup. But it appears that the Aminu Maigari-led board solved this crisis when they decided that Keshi would pick the team’s training base and other ancillary needs for the Eagles. This is a brilliant move as it will keep Keshi et al quiet when the chips are down in Brazil.

Such mundane talk of the propriety of the NFF picking the team’s training base ahead of the coaches would be far-fetched. The interesting aspect of this development is that we were the only country where the coach picked its training camp. In fact, among the five qualifiers from Africa, only Nigeria and Ghana’s coaches attended the event. It can’t happen here for Keshi not to attend FIFA’s World Cup draws.

Indeed, Keshi has confirmed that he would get Nigeria the best facilities. So, the aspect of NFF cutting corners for such an arrangement with FIFA is forbidden.

This approval given to Keshi shows that the NFF learnt from the 2010 experience where the imbroglio from the Hamshire Hotel ruined our preparations for the South Africa 2010 World Cup tournament.

The furore from the Hamshire Hotel saga set the NFF against the Presidential Task Force (PTF), with the National Sports Commission (NSC) serving as the battle axe. Hiding under the obnoxious Decree 101, which gives the sports minister discretionary powers to intervene in matters of football that bother on national interest, the Hamshire Hotel ruse provided the platform to divide the stakeholders and even the players.

PTF members saw themselves as having the powers to run our football. Former NFF President Sani Lulu, a stickler for the enforcement of the tenets of the FIFA statutes, ensured that the body did its job. While others were busy preparing their national teams for the Mundial, our PTF experts and, indeed, the former minister did several visits to FIFA, seeking to oust the NFF with the PTF. Things got so bad that the former minister wrote to FIFA, urging it not to release our World Cup earnings to the NFF. It was that bad. We became the laughing stock.

Our situation was a clear case of a divided house; it fell like a pack of cards. FIFA chiefs were wondering how we opted to dig landmines for our team even before the competition began. Will the NFF cede the task of picking the hotel where the Eagles will stay to Keshi? What is wrong with that if that will prevent any buck passing, not forgetting that the location of the hotel where our players stayed in 1994 in the United States (US) contributed greatly to our exit, despite our superlative showing. Clemens Westerhof still feels that we could have qualified for the semi-finals, if our administrators had done his bidding to relocate the players from the noisy hotel in the US.

The Maigari-led NFF can also cede the choice of hotel for the team to Keshi. The NFF will eventually pay; so, it doesn’t really matter. Such mundane things shouldn’t distort our preparations. If Keshi feels that it would further burden him, he should be made to put it in writing. It is good that we will be going to the Mundial as African champions. This feat is chiefly responsible for the absence of another PTF.

Preparations for our trip to Brazil should be hinged on the lessons of the past. I always feel bad about Nigeria when teams arrive at World Cup venues in their country’s national carriers. My pain starts when countries start to paint the designated aircraft with World Cup insignia. It is always a thing of pride watching countries board the aircraft in their national dresses. It shows a sense of belonging.

Airlifting the Eagles to Sao Paulo is another contentious issue. We need to fix this aspect. The government should assign an aircraft for this exercise. The African champions’ arrival in Brazil should be celebrated with ceremony. The last NFF board had issues with flying the Eagles so much so that an empty aircraft had to be flown from Nigeria to England to take the team to South Africa. It shouldn’t happen again.

It is heart-warming that the NFF is considering an international friendly against England at the Wembley Stadium. Such high profile games will help the coaches to correct the flaws noticed. It would also help them in picking their players because the World Cup is not a tea party.

Nothing can be better than the news from Brazil during the week that Maigari and Keshi agreed to work together. I believe them and I hope that they don’t listen to fifth columnists gained from the past rifts.

History will remember Maigari and Keshi, if Nigeria plays in the semi-finals of the Brazil 2014 World Cup. The minister captured the new direction for our World Cup campaign by insisting that no target should be set for the team. Such targets are meant to witch hunt the players and coaches as well as oust the NFF board. Nigerians await the NFF board that would return after the Mundial. Would Maigari’s board break that jinx? Like the Edo people will say, Oba Khato Okpere, Ise!