I did not even bother
myself to watch the match against South Africa in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state even
though it was transcendental for the future of my dear nation in its quest to
defend the title it won in South Africa in 2013 in the oncoming 2015 edition
slated for Equatorial Guinea.
The super Eagles team headed
by Coach Stephen Keshi has in recent times displayed a very deficient technical
and tactical understanding of the game; the team had declined notoriously in
form and quality since winning the nations ´cup in 2013, coinciding as it were
with the loss of control and direction of the team by the coaching crew headed
by Coach Stephen Keshi who on winning the nations ´cup changed his functional
approach and dismantled a team he was lucky to have discovered and opted rather
for the old and dysfunctional system of things that has plunged our nation into
the sorry governmental state that it is in today.
Keshi, like the typical Nigerian
man that he is, allowed his success to go into his head and worst still destabilize
his mission as a coach. He eventually went to the world cup just one year after
conquering Africa with some players who did not participate in that successful
conquest of Africa, players who were completely out of form and who had not in
any way participated in qualifying Nigeria for the world cup And by so doing,
Keshi destroyed the union and the togetherness he was lucky to have found in a
team that was beginning to mentally believe in its capacity to win great things
after a very long period of impasse and failure.
Although, many Nigerians,
in our spirit of mediocrity-tolerance celebrated our lackadaisical performance at
the world cup even when some of us believed and expected that the same team
that conquered Africa just barely a year ago could have given any world rated
football nation a close fight. Our technical crew at the world cup exhibited a
very deficient technical and tactical knowledge of the game, and as is innate
in us, we began to depend on good luck rather than hard work….. And the rest is
history.
Some of us saw the tell
tale sign of exhaustion in the technical crew which was also made manifest in
the attitude of the team, the passion, the hunger for victory that was hitherto
present in the African nations´ cup was conspicuously missing thereafter. And
to make matters worse, some of the players who had performed acceptably well at
the nations´ cup like Emenike, Victor Moses and even Mikel Obi became a complete
disappointment at the world cup and in every subsequent matches they played for
Nigeria, but Keshi´s insistence on always feeding a completely worn out Mikel
Obi would be the crux that will deal a devastating blow to our ambition of
defending the nations´ cup in 2015.
The continuous and eternal
tussle for administrative power by the Nigerian football governing body, the
NFF, one of the most corrupt institutions in the world did not help matters at
all. I will really never understand why a nation as passionate about football as
Nigeria and where football is the only remaining unifying factor has completely
sworn never to put someone with enough football understanding at the helm of
its football administration. It is like building a hospital and putting a herdsman
in charge of it instead of a doctor, why have we never had an ex-footballer as
an NFF chairman in Nigeria? Why do we always opt for football laymen to manage
football issues in this country? And why is the government constantly intervening
in football issues in Nigeria?
Haven said all this; I think
it is just and proper that Nigeria did not qualify for Equatorial Guinea 2015,
because if we had qualified, it would still have appeared as if everything is
ok with our football in Nigeria. Some people, especially government agents and agencies
would have gone around bombastic of the achievement. So now that we are out of
the competition by our own merit, a very serious and a total overhaul of the
sector are necessary. It is not just enough to change a person and believe that
everything is ok, we need to cleanse the entire football policy making organs
in our country, a completely new approach must be adopted, the private and the
public entrepreneurs should come together, especially in the area of tapping
into the talents that abound in our country from a very young age. Our players
need tactical discipline and these things can only be inculcated at a very
young age, say from 5 to 6 years.
I know for sure that nothing
special will be done after this shameful outing of our super eagles, as is
customary in us, we will make the noise for two days and afterwards we will
return back to normalcy as if nothing is amiss. I just wish that we think less
for once about what we can steal from Nigeria and think for once on how we can
move her an inch forward.
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