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One up, Two Down
By Toyin | September 24, 2008
When they came to Nigeria for the first leg of the African qualifier for the CAF under 17 championships, the young boys from Benin Republic across our borders looked like a bunch of comedians.
What with their dark, slippery and shiny skins, low quality jerseys and of course, poorly dressed officials. But by the time our “Golden”? Eaglets huffed and puffed to beat their less illustrious opponents, I knew something stunning is likely to happen.
Unfortunately, I was unable to watch the return leg live but our boys were comprehensively beaten by a well-motivated and hungry (for success) Benin team and at the end of the day, we were left wondering at what happened. My ‘eye’ that traveled to Cotonou and saw the match live told me that our boys were unable to piece together two passes at any stretch during the duration of the game.
How come? We are World Champions at this stage and one of the two countries to have won under FIFA under 17 three times. Brazil is the second country. Why did we capitulate so fast after such a glorious ending in South Korea?
Lack of planning, which is the bane of any endeavour in life have come to haunt us yet again. Lets us return to the drawing board. Did I hear you say not again? Even the drawing board is filled with jargons and rubbish that it has remained unclean.
A team returned from a world championship with the gold and yet we had to do away with almost all the coaching staff to satisfy the parochial view that there must be ethnic balancing in all our national sporting engagements. Spain, the team that we beat in the final in South Korea is still having around the full complement of their coaching staff. They are already planning to go one better the next time. Even the chief coach has been with the youth team for 11 years.
What about our own FA? The tendency is that: your brother has done his shift; it is time for mine to take over. Even when this goes against any logic and common reasoning possible, we still indulge in this self-destructive behaviour.
How do we explain away the fact that the African and World champion will not be available to defend her crown won just a year ago in Togo? Certainly, we would not have been able to go for the world championship save for the fact that we are hosting it. This still remains a possibility due to our administrators’ tendency to bungle even the most routine of exercise.
Can you then begin to imagine the implication of this on the various sectors of our national life? Youths promising and potentially prominent laid to waste, economic loss to media houses, anger and stress from fans resulting in fatal sicknesses, and the greatest of all, potential accomplishment taken away.
We cannot continue like this. We must look at the way and manners other nations conduct their sporting business and come out on top. It is about time to put our house, not only in order, but also in sanity. We must make merit and suitability key criteria in staff selection across all our teams.
In conclusion, let us evolve a long-term planning and preparation schedule that take into consideration our peculiar environment. Keep our coaches on contracts with performance expectations clearly spelt out. Provide the necessary infrastructures and allied requirement for them to succeed and give a free hand on team selection.
This is the way it is done in more successful countries, and this is the way it should be done here.
Topics: Nigerian Football |