By Daily Sports on November 19, 2019

With regret and disappointment I inform you that Nigeria will not be appearing at the CHAN this year, an African international competition for home based professional soccer players. Nigeria failed to beat Togo’s local based players to the ticket.

I also regret to inform you that Nigeria will also not be participating in the soccer event of the Olympic Games next year after failing to qualify from the African Under-23 games group stage.

Yes, the same Olympics that we won in 1996 with the likes of the great Austin Jay Jay Okocha and mercurial Nwankwo Kanu.

You may already know these news by now of course and, you should know too that, if there were recent opportunities to make a case for Nigerian home based players and coaches, the Under-23/team to the African games and the home based Super Eagles failed to make use of them by their failure to qualify for major showpiece events that could have helped sell their names.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment must be about Coach Imama Amapakabor (one man I personally consider as one of the finest Nigerian coaching brains presently) and the fact that he oversaw these two epic failures as coach of the teams.

Football is every inch the results oriented business it has ever been and Imama of course has to bear responsibility for the lack of success of the teams he was placed in charge of.

Imama’s failing though is microcosmic of the larger problems plaguing the Nigerian local game, with the system rotten by corruption that starts right from the kindergarten levels where players are lobbied into national teams without regard for best practices that should include a pure focus on their talents.

The system is plagued by a widespread disinterest in the thorough studies and application of modern trends in on-field and off-field coaching trends in favour of the olden days’ style of doing things.

Last year I took my youth team to a trial program at the Nero sports complex in Anambra State and l was informed that some spectators seated at the one end were members of the coaching crew of the national under-17 team the Golden Eaglets.

I took only a few players there and I had to be in the pitch playing with them. I told them: “Keep calm and let’s try to play our way. Let’s build up at the back and try to form the appropriate passing triangles and play with confidence.”

To my chagrin, as we passed the ball around and tried to build from the back, some members of the “technical crew of the Eaglets” were shouting at the boys and ridiculing us for trying to play like “Oyibo”. You could see from their faces and feel in the tone of their voices an aversion for appreciating the principles of passing football we were trying to apply.

It was disturbing as I contemplated there and then how, in our desperation to win and follow short cuts, we have almost abandoned a desire to try to play the game the beautiful way.

Look at our club sides today in our so-called professional league and tell me that watching most matches are not a draining experience. The fans have deserted the stadia en masse and only very, I mean very few supporters will think of abandoning a live English premier league match to watch a local league game, even for free.

To qualify for the group stage of the CAF champions league nowadays seem a task too difficult for our clubs as the champions of Nigerian league usually are bundled out at the qualifying stages and have to settle for the 2nd tier Confederations Cup.

In fact, the only Nigerian side worth watching today are the Super Eagles coached by a foreigner Gernot Rohr. Yes it’s true sadly. The Under-17 have failed, the Under-21 national team have failed, the Under-23 have failed and our clubs have failed. The Super Eagles are the only ones attracting respect to the Green White Green. Yet we hear disturbing news that the contract of Gernot Rohr the Franco-German will not be renewed and rumors have reached fever pitch that the coach may walk away from Nigeria soon.

Rohr has brought sanity into the Super Eagles, ensuring that current form and a real desire to play for Nigeria are the major yardstick for selection into the team.

He has used his network of contacts and persuasive personality to convince good talents of Nigerian origin into the Super Eagles and what we have is a vibrant senior national side that we can be proud of; a side that can go toe to toe with the great Brazil and not look inferior.

Of course the NFF president Amaju Pinnick knows all too well the struggles and limitation of our local coaches as he had dismissed not too long ago the chances any one of them taking over the reins of the Eagles. But it makes for uncomfortable reading, the simmering disagreement between the body he leads and Rohr. Hopefully, common sense will prevail and both parties can reach an amicable agreement.

I tell you my truth, I do wish we have a Rohr in every level of our football aplenty. We need men of real vision, a sense of long term planning, the intelligence to understand the ever evolving world of tactical football and the strength of character to do what is right.

Source Daily Sports

Posted November 19, 2019

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