Where is Gbolahan Salami? Did I hear you say which Salami? Ok. Let me ask again; where is Salami, aka Balotteli? Oh my God? Sometimes, such nicknames come back to haunt us. I hope this is not what has happened to Gbolahan Salami, Nigeria’s CHAN Eagles captain and last season’s Globacom Premier League top scorer.
So what about Salami? Well, wherever he is today, he must be ruing his situation, having chosen the pursuit of the Golden Fleece to an unnamed club outside Nigeria rather lead the country’s home-based Eagles to the ongoing CHAN Championships in Rwanda. This isn’t the first time Salami has chosen self above country. Shortly before the team was to play against Tanzania in Dar es Salam, Salami left the camp because his travelling documents were stuck in one of the European embassies. The Eagles missed Salami’s bravado and sharpness in front of the goalkeeper. Nigeria played out a barren draw against the Tanzanians.
I won’t blame Salami for choosing the European transfer option, especially with the backlog of unpaid salaries and allowances in most Nigerian clubs. But he has been through this before. He knows that deals don’t come easily during the January window, largely because European clubs are looking for quick fixes – players with pedigree to block leakages in their teams, not upstarts, such as Salami – with due respect to his talent.
Salami ought to have known that as the team’s captain, he would get better and bigger European contracts from direct negotiations with him than through agents or managers. Rwanda has been invaded by club scouts searching for “cheap” talents just as we have heard that they are falling over themselves for Nigeria’s wonder kid, Chisom Chikatara.
Indeed, it would have benefited Salami more if he joined his mates in Kigali. Salami would have given the coaches the option of playing two goal-scoring strikers instead of changing winning formations simply because one striker is nursing an injury. Salami’s bustling style which is reminiscent of Daniel Amokachi of yore, could have helped the CHAN Eagles. He would have scored goals with aplomb. He would have been the poster star of the tournament. And the scouts would love to come in droves for his signature. Salami wouldn’t have needed any agent to do his bidding. As the poster boy of the competition, negotiations would be done directly, with his agent listening.
One must remind Salami that European clubs want regular internationals. He is an international but would need to show his suitors clips of past games, instead of giving them the opportunity to watch him live as they are doing with Chikatara. But would the Eagles chief coach Sunday Oliseh give Salami another chance to fight for a shirt in the team after two incidents of dumping his squad?
Salami will get a shirt, if selected for the camp but most coaches stick with winning squads. Oliseh won’t want to bank on Salami a third time, having been disappointed twice. He would definitely rely on Chikatara, who must learn from Salami’s mistakes.
Salami’s fate reminds this writer of the need to get NFF chiefs to call registered agents for a meeting where they would be reminded not to cajole our players who have national assignments to prosecute, except the deal have been concluded before the lads are invited to the camp.
Agents are destroying our emerging stars with their promises of juicy contracts when they know that transfers during the January window are targeted at tested players who will make immediate impact not fledgling star, such as Salami.
The NFF must warn these agents and scouts not to confuse the players now that the 2016 Olympic Games beckons. My fear is that with the Olympics slated for August, we are likely to have the scenario where our talented players sneak out of the country in search of better deals in Europe. These home grown players jump at anything. Such offers give them the best chance to earn a living from playing football, unlike what they are faced with in the local leagues. These gullible boys easily multiply the meagre cash in foreign currencies by the going rates in Nigeria and head for such destinations at the behest of shylock agents. I digress!
Salami’s loss, like they say, is Chikatara’s gain; yet the former in the CHAN Eagles would have been a strong arsenal in the team’s armoury. Sadly, we are out of the CHAN Championships in Rwanda with Chikatara, Usman Mohammed, Chima Akas, Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Austin Oboroakpo and Ifeanyi Mathew as new names for the Super Eagles. These players form part of the positives from the country’s disappointing outing.
The CHAN Eagles didn’t do well at all. They were poor in set pieces; they didn’t know what do beyond sending long balls to Chikatara, who evidently became a marked man after his hat-trick against Niger and intelligent strike against Tunisia. The team was largely unimaginative in its play; the players couldn’t send passes to themselves to force their opponents to make mistakes, especially in the game against Guinea. CHAN Eagles played as if they were told that a draw result was all that they needed to qualify. So, when the Guineans struck, it was clear that we had no plan to score goals.
Oliseh’s laughable excuses
One can excuse Sunday Oliseh of some of the blame because he was out of the country attending to his health. I hope he took down notes, which should include devising other ways of scoring goals – set pieces and teaching the boys how to shoot accurately in front of the goal area. But Oliseh must responsibility for the team’s ouster. It is laughable that he is talking about moral issues when he should bury his head in shame that we couldn’t qualify from a group that had Guinea, Niger and Tunisia.
Since Oliseh got this job, I have refrained from scolding him, largely because I have been accused of not liking Nigerian coaches. But the truth is that Nigerian coaches have not grown from being players in their utterances and actons. Otherwise, what does Oliseh mean with this ignoble excuse: “It’s a big disappointment, but I’m proud of my boys, even though we did not go through. They gave a good image of themselves. Somewhere inside it was difficult for the players. They have given their best; they needed that lift and they couldn’t find it then.
“We came out to win, but we did not play. My players are human and there is limit to what they can hold. For some morale reasons, they couldn’t fight it today. My players have children and families. Adult tournaments are not youth tournaments,” said Oliseh.
Is Oliseh saying that the Sport Minister’s stay with the team didn’t address the issues he was talking about? Did they not tell Nigerians that they were given all they needed to excel before and during the competition? Did NFF not provide Oliseh with the logistic support for him to succeed? Is it not true that everything he asked for he got? NFF secured a camping site in Pretoria at the high performance centre. The federation organised two international friendly games against Cote d’ Ivoire and Angola? So what does he mean by moral issues? Did the minister not explain to them the reasons for the delay in settling their matter? Oliseh didn’t know the boys because he wasn’t with the team in Port Harcourt.
Oliseh must shut his mouth because he got all that he needed. What manner of moral issues is he talking about given the fact that Samson Siasia delivered the trophy with the U-23 side, Dream team VI, with his mother held captive by kidnappers? Siasia is my man of the year for how he managed to put aside the trauma of his mother’s kidnap for a national assignment? Oliseh, please learn to own up to your faults.
Those who didn’t make their mark in Rwanda should be dropped. The NFF needs to have a permanent coach for the CHAN Eagles who should periodically be made to present his team against the Super Eagles, whenever they are in camp, ahead of any international assignment.
I align with the thoughts of NFF President Amaju Pinnick, who reiterated that the African Nations Championship is “both developmental and preparatory for bigger challenges”, and said without mincing words that the Federation would now shift focus to the qualification race for the bigger Africa Cup of Nations. There could also not be a better response from the Glasshouse chiefs than to apologise for the woeful outing in Rwanda.
Former Green Eagles Captain Christian ‘Chairman’ Chukwu, ruing Nigeria’s ouster from CHAN offered insights into what to do with the team.
Chukwu said: “Well, that’s football for you. There is nothing any of us can do to change the result. It’s just unfortunate. However, I will like this CHAN squad to be kept together to form the bulk of Super Eagles so that in the next competition we will be certain we have a team already on ground.”
We, however, need to have a basis for picking national team players, such that people don’t say that we left our best players at home when our teams are eliminated. This task of picking the best players rests with the chieftains of the Nigeria Premier League (NPL), whose duty is to ensure that proper evaluation of players exists in the system.
The Nigeria Premier League is the only competition where those in charge don’t see anything wrong in not having the best players’ XI of each week which will also result in monthly awards for the best players, as we see in most European leagues.
What it simply means is that in a month, we would have had 30 names that will be constant in the weekly selection of 11 players. It means also that we will have monthly between these 30 and 44 names of outstanding players in the domestic league.
With this evaluation chart, no coach would dare list any outsider, knowing that his employers have a list of outstanding players in the league. The task of picking these players should be handled by the NFF Technical Committee, headed by Shuaibu Amodu, in conjunction with those that the NPL would pick to handle such a sensitive assignment.
