@kaybaba99
I started this article almost a year ago but I had to shelve it when something else came up and I dumped it in my to-do list hoping to get back and finish it someday soon.
However the timing was always not right as one thing or the other conspired against my finishing it as events happen at the speed of light in the world of football.
After watching the Super Eagles huff and puff to beat Swaziland over two legs in a 2018 World Cup qualifying round, I felt there won’t be a better time to dust this piece up, complete it and push it out there to stir your thoughts.
Prior to the first leg of the game against the Swazis, my cousin who’s based in that country was giving me a running commentary of events leading to the match and revealed how everybody was running scared about facing the ‘almighty’ Nigerians in a football match.
The Sihlangu Semnikati (their national team) fans were wary of running up a cricket-score defeat which could humiliate them so they prevailed on their players to lose with dignity.
The fans also invaded the airport to welcome the Super Eagles and scrambled for photo-ops with our ‘superstars’ while their players dreaded the moment they’ll step onto the same pitch with Mikel Obi, Ogenyi Onazi, Ahmed Musa, Obafemi Martins, Kelechi Iheanacho and the rest of the guys playing top-flight football outside Africa.
As it transpired, they fought the Eagles to a standstill and though they lost the return leg 2-0 four days later in Port-Harcout, they were far from disgraced as Nigeria had to rely on a late second goal to make the match safe.
This two-legged fixture, more than anything else, prompted me to examine some of the fallacies about Nigerian football which, over the years, some of us have unwittingly come to accept as gospel truth.
I can readily think about five now, though I’m very sure there are still a several others, so let’s look at them one after the other…
1) WE HAVE THE BEST PLAYERS:
How many times have you heard supposedly knowledgeable ‘analysts’ make such unfounded claims that Nigeria is blessed with the best crop of players.
The last football transfer window closed in the major European leagues without a notable Nigerian transfer to talk about. In the last two seasons, the biggest transfer story was Super Falcon’s Asisat Oshoala’s switch from Rivers Angels to Liverpool Ladies.
Apart from that, we had only minor moves of our players from one obscure league to another and a major number of our star players being active as bench-warmers in their clubs.
More tragic, the shortlist of the 2015 African Footballer of the year did not have a single Nigerian player among the finalists.
This, in a country that produced 5 African players of the year in the seven years between 1993 and 2000, yet some people choose to live in delusion that we have the best players in Africa?
No sir!!! Maybe in the 1990s but certainly not any longer.
2) GOD LOVES ONLY NIGERIA:
I will explain this with an interesting story. In March of 2010 when the NFF contracted Lars Lagerback to handle the Super Eagles at the World Cup of that year, I flew into Abuja to attend his public presentation at the Media Centre of the National Stadium.
As part of activities to mark the ceremony, an international friendly was organised for the Eagles against the Congo DR and we all watched from the stands. I sat a few metres away from Lagerback and when the Nigerian team filed on to the field and observed our traditional pre-match prayers, I saw him smiled. When, two days later, he took the first training session with the team, he waited impatiently as they huddled together again to pray.
After the training session, I asked the Swede what his observation was about the prayer sessions and how I’d noticed his discomfiture at the team’s praying habit. Lagerback smiled again and said: “I’m also a Christian but I pray in church and then go to the office to work very hard. That’s the only way to be sure of getting a result.”
By implication, he meant that overly depending on prayers without putting in a decent shift will avail nothing.
Having read this, think about how many times you’ve had a coach or player(s) asking Nigerians to pray for a national team before a crucial game? Can you count how many of such requests you’ve had? What happens when you pray and the other team prays too?
Your guess is as good as mine.
MONEY CAN MOTIVATE PLAYERS:
3) I often crawl into my skin when I hear officials of some of our teams trying to offer cash incentive to players when they have their backs to the wall in crucial games.
Often you hear stuff like “beat this team and get 150% match bonus” or “get $20,000 for every goal you score” and other inanities like that.
My point is that such knee-jerk reactions do not necessarily produce the desired effect. In my opinion, if you want to motivate a team, give them the necessary tools with which to work and provide a conducive environment for the team to excel.
When did you ever hear the English FA or the German DFB make such pronouncements to their teams in the thick of battle?
If a team, having been promised such head-turning bonuses, go ahead to win such an important game, then I contend that they could have won without that bonus.
More often than not, we find our teams being distracted by negotiations over money right in the middle of a tournament. Twice, at the 1998 World Cup before the game against Denmark and in 2014 in Brazil before the Super Eagles took on France, the players were reportedly embroiled in discussions with officials all through the night and failed to observe the necessary focus and concentration required for games of such magnitude.
They subsequently lost those games and that’s why we got to hear about it. Had they won, and on the occasions when they actually did, nobody gets to hear a word until the next time when we come unstuck again and the recriminations start flying all around.
4) FIFA, CAF ARE UNHAPPY WHEN NIGERIA MISS COMPETITIONS:
Remember when we lost to Argentina at USA ’94 and one of the many rumours that widely circulated at the time was that FIFA officials were unhappy that Nigeria got knocked out in such a painful circumstance and have therefore re-ordered a replay of that game. This rumour followed an earlier one that FIFA (chai, FIFA don suffer for Naija hand) had awarded the game against Argentina (which the Eagles lost 2-1) to Nigeria because Diego Maradona failed a drug test.
Not even my explanation that FIFA would not alter the result of a game on account of catching one player doping (however the result could be cancelled and the game awarded to the other team if two or more players are involved) didn’t make any sense to my audience.
Their reason? This is Nigeria and FIFA will not dare toy with us.
Even when Angola beat us to the 2006 World Cup ticket, there were insinuations in some quarters that Nigeria, not the Angolans would ultimately go to Germany.
Really?
5) OUR BEST PLAYERS ARE BASED IN EUROPE
This used to be true in the late 80s up until the end of 2000. Since then, the lines dividing our foreign-based players and their domestic league counterparts had been increasingly getting blurred till now that you can hardly separate the two in terms of quality.
Let me give a succinct example. The Super Eagles were held to a goalless draw in Lobamba by a plucky Swaziland whose coach then devised a plan to neutralise Nigeria in the second leg four days later.
However, his plans backfired because one player on the Nigerian side scuppered all their well-laid plans.
Hear the Sihlangu coach, Harris Bulunga: “Unfortunately for us, your coach (Oliseh) was smart enough to make some changes that we had hoped to capitalize on having noticed the lapses in the first leg. For example your (Nigeria) midfield was very slow in the first leg, so I planned to capitalize on that but he changed and put on the No.18 and that affected our whole set-up. He (No.18) was aggressive, he was quick. The left back was also one of the new players that we didn’t expect so I believe he (Oliseh) saw his own weaknesses in the first leg because we had planned against those players that we saw but he made a smart decision.”
You know what? The player who wore the No.18 shirt for Nigeria on the day was Paul Onobi and he plays for Sunshine Stars of Akure in the domestic league, not any fancy-named team in Europe.
This means that, in trying to build a new team, Oliseh would do better than to be prejudiced against any player on the basis of where such a player ply his trade. Whether a player plays for Warri Wolves in Nigeria or Wolfsburg in Germany, the most important thing is to give each person a chance to prove his worth.
Doesn’t matter whether you play home or abroad.
So, folks, is there any fallacious ‘truth’ which I’ve left out? Tell me about it, please.
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