Lessons from the World Cup
Nigerians are very passionate people and perhaps nowhere is this shown more than football. It animates most of us and usually, we are often united in rooting for our teams during international football competitions. Even those who don’t follow football regularly join the aficionados in showing support, at least for the moment. One of the drawbacks of this is that all of us want to be coaches and managers. We all pontificate magisterially pretending to know what should be done and the kind of formation that will bring success on the field.
The 2014 World Cup in Brazil was not different. Interestingly too, we don’t care where the players are from as long as they can do the job on the field. It is one area of our lives that geopolitical zones count for nothing. Sadly our adventure ended on Monday, June 30, when the Les Blues of France defeated the Super Eagles by two goals in a second round game. To add more misery to our exit, the two goals came in the last 11 minutes of the game.
But what are the lessons we can learn from this exit? Are there things we can do better and thereby bring improvement on our performance in the next four years in Russia? In debates with friends and colleagues before the World Cup commenced, I maintained that if we qualified out of our group, Stephen Keshi deserves another national honour as that would make him a perfect alchemist. We lack many basic ingredients necessary for us to get a perfect blend of what makes a champion.
We cannot jump the preparation stage and think we can attain instant success. Gradual building from the grassroot has disappeared from our country and replaced by a culture of immediate victory. In 1998, we defeated Spain at France 98 World Cup and this forced the Spanish to retreat and start afresh building a competent team that held the world spellbound until they were dethroned this year. Our supply line of skillful and more-than-average footballers is shrinking, we are no longer producing them quickly enough like the days of yore.
Looking at our team to Brazil, only Ahmed Musa and Efe Ambrose won the league battles in the countries they ply their trade. Musa with CSKA Moscow of Russia and Ambrose with Celtic in Scotland, but these countries are not top-notch football nations. Just ask Russians whose coach is actually the highest paid among the 32 countries that were at the World Cup but failed to make it out of their group. Save for Vincent Enyeama who nearly broke a record as goalkeeper with Lille in France, the rest are either emerging talents or those who do not play regularly for their clubs. It is the eighth wonder of the world expecting those who warm benches to suddenly transform to stars at the World Cup.
Our league must be run properly with competitive games for it to be an incubator of good players. Football management too must be improved so that we do not witness a near revolt of players like we saw in Brazil. Where are the age grade competitions that will supply future stars for our national teams? Nearly all the football academies we have are privately owned, yet we want to win the World Cup. The interview Keshi had with TheCable says a lot and nothing else could be added to how the NFF maltreated him. His records really speak for him. He won the Africa Nations Cup at the first attempt last year unlike Clemens Westerhof, appointed in 1989, who needed three attempts– 1990, 1992, and 1994 before winning. A major difference, however, is that we led our group in USA ’94 World Cup before advancing to the second round that year, winning two and losing one game. It can also be argued that Westerhof Eagles evoked more fear in the opponents’ hearts than our team of this year.
Keshi too ought to look back and see some things he could have done better. I think he could have handled the disagreement with Ikechukwu Uche better as he did with Peter Odenmwingie who was an asset in Brazil. Maybe he should not have dropped Sunday Mba too as he was missed especially with the injuries the bedeviled our team. The real fly in Keshi’s soup for me is his substitutions. They were simply not good enough and our results affirmed this. But all these should not make us throw away the baby with the bath water as we have spine that can form the nucleus for the future. Kenneth Omeruo, Juwon Oshaniwa, and Michael Babatunde offer us a fulcrum we can build on.
Russia 2018 is around the corner.
Excellent comments. The saddest thing though is the exit of Keshi. For my money, he is the best coach we’ve had since Westerhof not because of any great tactical acumen but just for his ability to knuckle down and do the work. He has made the team better than the sum of it’s parts and that is all we can reasonably expect. Let us hope that whoever takes over shows the same level of commitment and work ethic. To me Keshi’s reliance on what the players show in training rather than names was a major advantage as was his insistence that team harmony and unity be maintained. If we can get someone who mirrors this and adds a certain tactical acumen we would have a very good thing indeed. But our football needs more than a coach, as you rightly pointed out, we must update the structures at all levels. This i fear won’t happen though