Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) President Issah Hayatou likes playing pranks with Nigerians wherever he is here. He enjoys revisiting bad decisions taken against our senior national team Super Eagles and leaves us with the impression that he had nothing to do with the fate that befell us.
Hayatou speaks English fluently, but he comes here to speak French, no doubt his mother tongue as a Cameroonian. But Hayatou uses this code switch to hit us below the belt. Of course, Hayatou has a right to express his views, but such comments must not unearth a disappointing past like his last opinion on Austin Okocha’s loss at the CAF Awards in 1998 and 2004. We don’t need any reminder of the past since it is irredeemable.
Hayatou was here for the 2014 CAF/Glo Africa Footballer of the Year award. His salvo this time is that regrets not seeing Austin Okocha decorated with the award. This insult on our sensibilities reminds this writer of the goal scored by Henry Nwosu against Cameroon in the final of the Africa Cup of Nations in 1984. A very good goal, but it was controversially disallowed, with many pundits suggesting that the referee may have done that in awe of the CAF president.
In 1998, despite Nigeria’s shambolic outing at the France’98 World Cup, Okocha was easily the most exciting player to watch. His breath-taking dribbles earned a mouth-watering contract at Paris Saint Germain (PSG). Pundits thought that Okocha would without doubt be the default winner of the 1998 Africa Footballer of the Year award.
Not so for CAF. We were bored with the diabolical machination of having voters coming from Francophone countries voting their own. Where were these Francophone voters when Victor Ikpeba, Emmanuel Amuneke, the late Rashidi Yekini and Nwankwo Kanu won the award? When these Nigerians won the award, they were as exemplary as Okocha was during the 1998 World Cup but they were not as skillful as the one also called Jay Jay. Indeed, Morocco didn’t qualify for the next round of the World Cup. Nigeria did, losing 4-1 to Denmark in the second round.
Okocha’s deft dribbles could rock a skeleton. His silky skills and wizardry leave his markers sprawling on the turfs. His footwork left spectators yelling for more. So good was Okocha that he was named twice BBC Africa Footballer of the Year. Many still yell watching clips of Okocha playing for Bolton Wanderers FC in the Barclays English Premier League. In fact, in one of the footages, the then Bolton manager Sam Allardyce imitates Okocha’s dancing steps after scoring some terrific goals.
How CAF came up with Moroccan Mustafa Hadji, the pony-tailed striker, as the continent’s best player in 1998 confounded the world. Had CAF crowned Sunday Oliseh, who placed third in that year, there would have been the silent grumbling from football’s aficionados. Not the loud disapprovals that trailed Hadji’s choice.
At the 2002 World Cup, El-Hadji Diouf rightly got the award because of his meteoric outing for Senegal at the 2002 World Cup, which was co-hosted by Korea/Japan. The Senegalese hit the quarter-finals in their maiden appearance at the Mundial, with Diouf being the Teranga Lions’ undertaker. Sadly, Diouf was a very bad advertisement for the African game with his conduct in-and-out of the field. He hit the headlines for the wrong reasons, earning the bad sobriquet of ‘spitting cobra.’
It was clear to everyone in 2004 that CAF and its clan didn’t want Okocha among the winners when they shamelessly denied Jay Jay the award, in spite, of being voted the player of the tournament, again in Tunisia. Without any doubt, Samuel Eto’O is a gifted player not as skillful as Okocha, even as he is a ruthless finisher.
But what ought to have swayed the 2004 award in Okocha’s favour was his awesome display against Cameroon to qualify for the semi-finals. Many still savour the beauty in the curly free-kick that Okocha took to earn Nigeria the semi-final berth. The selectors opted to crown Eto’O as Africa’s best. No grudges though, considering the way the Cameroonian held the world spell-bound with his knack for goals playing for FC Barcelona in Spain.
Hayatou should save us his regrets. History will judge his body better when clips of African stars who shone in Europe and the Diaspora are watched by discerning people. Perhaps, it is this pain that Hayatou wants us to forget by saying: “Players like Jay Jay Okocha would have been very worthy to feature in the list of winners. But the technicians decided otherwise; it is the law of the game.” Hmmm! If Hayatou is convinced that they did the right thing, he should let us have some quiet. Nobody asked him to remind us of this decision.
We have forgotten about it, except for occasions when Okocha rightly captures this denial as his biggest regret, like he did some time ago when he said: “If I have any regret, that will be not winning the Africa Footballer of the Year award. But I don’t think I was meant to be because I gave my best, but at the end, it wasn’t good enough.”
Vintage Okocha; he isn’t one to rock the boat. A good sport – if you ask me. But when you look at those who got the crown in those years when Okocha was not favoured by CAF, you shudder because in one of those instances, Okocha was playing in the French Ligue Un for PSG. Would these technicians say they were not watching those games, if not physically but on television? God help us all!
Crocodile tears
Daily, the media is inundated with lamentations of Super Eagles players over Nigeria’s elimination at the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations, which begins today in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, without defending champions Nigeria.
The players feel that Nigerians are gullible. They are hoping that their pleas will sway the fans to forgive them. They must be joking because the losses incurred by Nigerians transcend the ardent football followers. Various facets of the football industry are counting their losses, with many pledging not to do business with the NFF, if these bunch of Eagles stars continue to play for Nigeria.
These disappointing Eagles are the reason why manufacturing giants Adidas don’t want to renew our kits contract. Their refusal to do business with Nigeria is germane because our players found it difficult to respect the terms of the Nigerian deal by wearing Adidas kits during the country’s assignments.
From the coaches to the players, they breached the rules, with one of the coaches dressed for pre and post-match conferences in Adidas kits but wearing a blue Nike fez cap. It was that bad.
The essence of having such international brands associated with our football is best seen with Adidas’ resolve to fund Manchester United FC of England’s £200 million quest to sign Lionel Messi. £200 million is chicken feed for Adidas, but they recognise the fact that having pictures of Messi wearing Adidas kits further raises its profile in the kitting industry, especially with a big football brand such as Manchester United.
Why would Adidas want to splash as much as $750 million on a jersey deal for Manchester United, with the caveat of getting Messi to Old Trafford? Simple; brand war. Did I hear you say how? Here is it; Messi plays for Barcelona FC in Spain, which wears Nike jersey. Yet, Messi is the poster boy of the Adidas brand, and they have long hoped to be able to help move him away from Barcelona – who are sponsored by main competitors Nike – and place him with a club sponsored by Adidas.
So, you can see why our coaches and players in the last set of Eagles should not humiliate us further by shedding crocodile tears for missing the AFCON 2015. Nigerians are worse off for our absence than they think. It would pay them to keep quiet. They have caused us enough pain.
Again, no brand worth its onions will do business with players and coaches who don’t see anything wrong with holding the country hostage over their entitlements. True, they have a right to demand their wages but with a lot of decorum not this style of making us the world’s laughing stock.
I hope that many of these disgruntled players know that they have no place in the Eagles as we rebuild for the 2018 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
NFF chieftains must warn the Eagles coach not to go near most of those who were at the Brazil 2014 World Cup, especially those who are not playing regularly for their European clubs.
We should rebuild the new Eagles, using the country’s Olympic Games team, the All Africa Games team and the Flying Eagles squad members. Those who were in Brazil have lost the appetite to play for glory. Rather, they are interested in knowing how much is in any game for them, largely because they know that they are in the twilight of their national team appearances. This is why whenever they assemble, what tickles their fancies most is what they would be paid for matches won, lost or drawn. They even have the audacity to ask to be paid upfront and such ridiculous requests of being paid for ‘lost’ game because they played their heart out.
Would it shock readers of this column to hear that each Super Eagles player got $5,000 for the drawn game against South Africa in Uyo? Their coaches received theirs too. No record of any coach or player rejecting the cash because Nigeria didn’t qualify for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations. Yet, they are shedding crocodile tears in the media, thinking we are fools.
Whereas shell-shocked fans around the country couldn’t eat, sleep or do anything reasonable after the game, the Eagles and their coaches hurried to the Government House to collect another $200,000 from the Akwa Ibom State governor, which they shared while we mourned. Enough.
