By Daily Sports on June 3, 2019

Football is not a pretender’s sport. It is either your team has superior technical and tactical approach to each given game or you will be made a mince-meat by your opponents. I am an incurable optimist and so I see things that way.

My take is that it is either you prepare well for examination as in a football tournament in order to do well among the frontliners or you take the back bench like the unready lot.

Since the Poland World Youth Championship began, I took time off in the newsroom of course to watch the Flying Eagles game against Ukraine. It confirmed my opinion of Paul Aigbogun and his technical and tactical abilities. My dear readers, you already know my view about the coach and so i won’t border you on that.

I am sure most of you saw the boys displaying nothing but shame. However today, the team will face fellow West African country, Senegal in the round of sixteen teams. The big question on the lips of football pundits and analysts is, can the Nigerian side survive the hard nut in junior Terenga Lions and how far can this highly uncoordinated Paul Aigbogun’s tutored boys go.

I never gave the team a chance because the coach is not a serious coach. He messed up Enyimba International FC twice and so except for divine intervention, he will mess up this Flying Eagles.  If the lads are prepared well, the team will give Senegal tough time and the win can go either way. But has this Flying Eagles team the clout to face squarely the rampaging Senegalese.

As a Nigerian and as one of the senior sports journalists in the country, I wish the team well. Flying Eagles can turn the table against the over ambitious Senegal side if there will be solid technical and tactical input from the Nigerian bench. One thought that by now the NFF must have sent a technical help to Poland to beef up the bench and also engender in Paul Aigbogun the needed confidence.

Now the International Athletics Federation IAAF has put its searchlight on Nigeria and the sharp practices that transpired is now in the open. Muhammadu Buhari’s immediate past Sports Minister Solomon Dalung, from IAAF records has questions to answer. 

What makes my anger boil over remains the fact that despite the much noise about corruption by Buhari yet Dalung is alleged to have pocketed multi million dollars belonging to AFN with the so called EFCC looking the other way?

Dalung, according to IAAF has his hands soiled and the stand of this columnist is that EFCC must invite Solomon Dalung for questioning. This must not be swept under the carpet as it has been since Buhari’s first term. This highly disputed second term must be different from the sad past where he used nepotism and sundry to sideline regions especially the South East.

Solomon Dalung must be arrested and brought to book because his alleged act is disgrace to Nigeria in the international community. I never hid my feelings about the clown called Solomon Dalung. He talks on drop of hat and eat from his vomit. He is without colour. He also has image problem.

Dalung is not a team player. The bitter pills he gave to the NFF executive committee members have backfired, and now it is his turn to grind. He betrays confidence and such people easily meet their Waterloo. Dalung is already in hot soup and must be prosecuted without delay. He must come up to account for the grant IAAF gave to AFN when the board was not yet constituted. Dalung signed collected and pocketed the million Dollars grant.

It is sad that this is again where we found ourselves. Dalung made a lot of noise calling that the brain behind the latest happenings in NFF be crucified. He must taste what he has cooked. He is a betrayal of the first order.

Whatever steers him now on the face is merited. As the scandal loads, we will as usual keep activities on our social media handle open. Daily Sports online would always be in the fore front to expose this Solomon Dalung stealing from the public which Buhari claimed he is against.

Now is the time to bring Dalung to book. Nothing best suits the current scandal as published by IAAF. 

And the clown exits: May we never see this kind of man as minister of sports in Nigeria again.

Imagine these quotes from Dalung, the Solomon that is the complete opposite of the former King of Israel.

1. Those asking us to refund IAAF's $135,000 grant are enemies of Nigeria

2. I became an ‘Undertaker’ to emerge longest serving minister of sports

3. The Special Athletes have shown you don't need long camping to win medals at the Olympics.

4. I was nicknamed ‘Small Pepper’ as a young footballer because of the way I tormented defenders of opposing teams.

– Just a few of his many flip flops in four years of his calamitous administration as Minister of Sports.

Keep shooting hard till next week!!

Source Daily Sports

Posted June 3, 2019

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