Let me begin today’s outing with the observation that I have made severally on this page, and which is that it is very difficult for a writer operating on our shores to have writer’s block. This is a situation where a writer who runs history on the go wakes up and can’t fathom an interesting topic to deal with.
Our country is full of drama. Mind you, I didn’t say actions – many of them are absurd to say the least. It is more like one week, five troubles. Currently, former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, who left us with a Muslim/Muslim leadership in a pluralistic state, has become the new agent of change on the block. Same person that told us Fulanis don’t forget or forgive wrong done to them, to explain away militia herders’ fatal forays into other nationals’ backyard across the country. This new revolutionary deserves close review.
Not playing down former President Ibrahim Babangida’s new book,”Journey in Service” which was launched last week. Many have asked “why now” and my answer has been “why not anytime he chooses to write. This is a free world. Some said he revealed a lot and I said that is the way it should be. At least, he has put a seal of disapproval on the wicked propaganda that the 1966 coup was an Igbo coup. He also said M.K.O. Abiola indeed won the 1993 presidential election. In my opinion this is healing for a nation in want of reconciliation. Babangida’s outing deserves a thorough look. Unfortunately, that won’t be done today, hence the topic you are seeing on this page today.
Sports may seem or be tagged a residual activity but for those who know, men and women who have taken time to study development elsewhere, it is not a eback room enterprise, it is a frontline human activity with a life of its own. Great nations take sports development seriously and pursue it with commitment and unblinking focus. They churn out sound policies in that regard and implement them with vigour. They create sports schools, provide equipment and train up instructors, including building up facilities which are efficiently maintained.
America few years ago knew nothing about football (which they refer to as soccer) but has cued in a very special manner, bringing talents from all over the world to ply their trade in the country, building first class infrastructure and paying very well.
Fédération Internationale de Football Association FIFA (which in English means International Federation of Football Associations) and Africa Football Federation that inspected our stadia declared that among the many spread across states only the Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state, is qualified to host international matches. This should bring some shame to our leaders or do you think otherwise?
Our league and club organizational operation remain rudimentary, yet we have examples to draw from in North Africa and South Africa but who cares. I have watched African club football tournaments more closely in the last three years and came out very convinced none of our teams going by the way they are organized and put together can get through preliminary rounds very easily. The quality and tactical savvy isn’t there at all. North African countries create a standard on which they build their clubs. They don’t allow the standard to drop.
South Africa is following in toe and even added extra. South African clubs, read teams, devise suitable playing patterns. Playing North African teams away one did think they were playing a home game. Orlando Pirates and Sunderland have become experts.They fear no foe, they tell what they plan to happen and they go out there and get the result.
What actually is our sports and football policy? To just participate or prove by successes we can be or are world beaters? Africa should fear us but the reverse is the case. We hide in the thinking that “there are no longer minors in sports or football.” Who says? Take Super Eagles for instance. If the vision is to have a world class team definitely the approach to the constitution of the team would be very different. A standing team would be in place and growing through very careful infusion of new recruits; it can’t be an all comers team.
The technical head should be an acclaimed tested hand. The other teams should be to test the capacity of local coaches who will graduate, based solely on credible, measurable performance level. Football buffs across the world agree we have talents enough to credibly compete and win the World Cup but the challenge has remained with assembling and thereafter creating a team that is technically and tactically very effective and proficient. The team we have put together in the last decade if not more is just an assemblage of footballers not a team.
They struggle to scrap out a few wins in between games. The era when Team Nigeria was feared is gone. Sports analysts in relation to the Super Eagles’ expected performance don’t talk from the point of certainty but the probable. Probable because of the talents available. It is a shame that a country of 200 million people can’t find a world class goalkeeper. Stanley Nwabali isn’t world class. The team has good central defenders but not rock solid back four like in the days of Uche Okechukwu.
The build follows one pattern: very slow start from the back. There is little or no transition from the middle to the strikers, and this is because there are no very creative midfielders in the team for a very long time. The outcome is that strikers are left to struggle to pick balls before moving for goals. It makes the task of scoring very difficult. Our new coach, if he must excel, would have to pick tapes of North African teams and some European teams to refresh his head on how teams plan their goals. Scoring near impossible goals, goals from very difficult angles have since gone away from the team.
Close watchers of the Super Eagles should tell us the last time the team scored from set pieces. The ability to score from the penalty spot ought to be a given, especially when the stakes are very high, meaning a future never prepared for can’t be entered.
Great teams prepare specific players to score from the spot certain they will put the ball behind the keeper even with eyes closed. Champions seize every opportunity.
If Eric Chelle must excel in his new task with the Super Eagles, the team under his care must be infused with a new spirit, the passion for victory or nothing. If the passion is there, it will show in their game, we will see the grit and urgency to get things done and very quickly. Their game would have intensity, purpose and determination would be written all over them. The technical team must come up with different approaches. What is more, they must get tapes of all oppositions in advance, study their players when playing at home and away and team tactics too.
We are to engage Zimbabwe, South Africa and Rwanda in the World Cup qualifying series. We can defeat all, if our bench studies what those teams do and then comes up with answers.
With the quality we have, our games away from home can be as if playing at home if we hype the games, build up energy in the boys and push them to play those games and indeed any match for that matter as if their lives depend on the outcomes.