Tag: world cup

Now let us try out some Hardball logic: because the world is round, great footballers who are masters of the round leather game can be said to have the world at their feet? Yes or no? Well, yes to the extent that every week, about half the world’s population sit at the edge of their seats to watch (or worship) these new gods of today’s world. Yes again to the extent that the best of them are valued and paid better than the world’s greatest leaders (one player by name Falcao reportedly earns about £450,000 (about N117million in one week!). On the other hand, no to the extent that even the greatest footballers with all their world-wide fame and renown hardly grow to become national political leaders.

But what might happen in 20 to 30 years’ time? Would football have completely conquered the world or would perchance, the world have done away with this ‘delirious virus’? Today, our winning teams are showered with cash, choice property and national honours, what would it be tomorrow, 50 years hence? Would it be political appointments or would great players automatically become alternate presidents of their countries? How would football play out in 50 years?

This brain wave seized upon Hardball as he contemplates Nigeria’s qualification to partake in mankind’s biggest one-game festival – the FIFA World Cup football tournament and the trajectory of Stephen Keshi in Nigeria’s football history. Last Saturday, the Nigerian senior team, the Super Eagles flew over their Ethiopian counterparts, the Walya Antelopes by a four goals to one aggregate to win a ticket to the soccer fiesta in Brazil next year. To qualify to play in the World cup is to rank among the elite foot-balling nations. That is what Nigeria has indeed become to the pride of millions of her citizens and credit for the current resurgence of Nigeria’s football may well be ascribed largely to one man – Stephen Okechukwu Keshi. He is Nigeria’s senior team coach/manager and he is the most remarkable Nigerian today in so many ways.

Keshi was captain of the Super Eagles that won the 1994 Africa Nations’ Cup and he captained the Nigerian team that made it to the first World Cup in 1994. Today as a coach, he has led our team to conquer Africa and also picked a ticket to play in the World Cup. What a feat! Particularly salutary is the fact that he has practically helped his country to pick the pieces of her football life, so to speak, once again. For many, since the 1994 exploits in Africa and the world, Nigeria’s football has been in decline both in the administrative office and on the football pitch. Apart from occasional sparks from the age grade teams, it was a harvest of sorrow for the teeming fans of the senior team. Numerous foreign and local coaches were tried without a positive result. It became quite difficult to cobble a national team in a country that had hundreds of professional footballers all over the world.

Even Keshi was tried and discarded until about a year ago when he was reappointed. This time, he did what most coaches had neglected to do over the years he chose to look inwards at the home league, selecting some of the promising ‘local’ lads he matched them with a few foreign professionals while discarding the jaded foreign ‘super-stars’. It has worked like magic since then leading to the lifting of the continental diadem.

Now, it is not only that we have a team but more significant is that we have a national team with growing form, character and depth. When they play the world champions Spain in the Confederation cup recently they proved they can hold their own. And last Monday against the Italians many of us saw in that outing, the Nigerian verve, gusto and our peculiar skills. As we go to Brazil next year, we go with high expectations not necessarily of lifting the greatest gold trophy on earth but of regaling the world with the great African brand of soccer.