No wonder they say Nigerians are Christians, they have
faith, big faith, far bigger that the size of a mustard seed and I must say,
this is very good.
Ordinarily looking at Nigeria Senior national team – Super
Eagles; almost maintaining a third place finish in the African Cup of Nations
for a decade rounding it up with failure to qualify for the last edition, last
year coupled with their consistent inconsistency and almost insignificant
impact at the World Cups, one would agree that our expectations for the team
right now should be more of how to build a strong and consistent team than
winning the Nations Cup next year.
I say this because it’s more obvious now than before that
the team had been on a down ward slide since after the World cup in France in
1998 and the problem has been more of the quality of players at the disposal of
the Coaches than the technical know how of the coaches, the problem has not entirely
been the problems of Siasia, Eguavoen, Amodu, Chukwu, Vogts or even Lagerback.
Let’s take a close look at the difference between the
quality of players then and now; between 1998 and 2000, Nigeria had her left
back playing for Chelsea (Babayaro), right back for Barcelona (Okonewo),
Central Defender moving between AC Milan and Inter (Taribo West), defensive
midfielder in Juventus (Oliseh), right winger in Real Marlocca (Finidi), play
maker in PSG (Jay Jay), left winger in Barcelona (Amuneke) and striker in
Arsenal (Kanu). But what do we have today? Average Nigerians don’t even know
the club sides of their players any more, our Captain is in Turkey, our best
striker in Westbrom and all our goalkeepers are now pilgrims in Israel.
Recently, Emmanuel Amuneke said he believes the Super Eagles
can win the next AFCON next January in South Africa, after thinking in
speechlessness if the former Super eagles winger was speaking another language,
I thought, yeah it could be. The reason not because our team is solid (we don’t
even know our main striker now like Yekini was in the 90s or Midfield pair like
Oliseh and Okocha were) but because there is no better team in African
currently and I think that explains how Zambia emerged winners of the last
edition (no disrespect to their efforts – they were good). We say our players
are not in top flight clubs in Europe currently but it’s like it’s now a
general African problem with the exception of Ivory Coast currently (which is
even fading away now).
Given this, one maybe tempted to think that if
Keshi’s boys could just add a little brilliance to their display coupled with
an excellent team spirit, if Zambia could then why not Nigeria, but then the
world cup in 2014 will be an entirely different kettle of fish.
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