Onyebuchi Onyegbule
Our national team, the Super Eagles quit the 2010 World Cup with one point after a four-year preparation. The experts know better but we who watch, have a word or two just for the sake of country. The last time the Eagles impressed at that stage was in 1994.
What made them tick was predominantly the harnessing of abundant raw, young talents with a tearing hunger to give notice of their effective presence at the world stage. The world paused and appreciated that presence with best placement ever for Nigeria. Behind this was an unconventional coach, who, ab initio, distanced himself from unimaginative bureaucracy, wasteful politicking but with a focus on delivering the unusual. But for inexperience, highly ranked Italy would have bitten the dust before them. I won’t also forget in a hurry the seamless support of the goggled Head-of-State who gave all to confirm that notice. Like him or not, Clemens Westerhof is an icon in Nigeria’s soccer history and deserves our collective thank you.
Under normal circumstances, this man who has so much heart for service to this nation should have been carried along all the way in the grooming of generations of talents, but it hasn’t been quite so. Lagerbach, an attractive gentleman with a charming personality but with body vibes that reveal his ignorance of Nigeria and Nigerians – planet earth’s species of a kind- before taking the job. The man had six months to articulate this and consequently, deliver the World Cup. Only super-human administrators think that way. He played six games, drew three, lost two, won one, went to World Cup and got a point. Aggregate result: failed. His failure notwithstanding, hoards of the connected had begun chanting the extension of his contract. Why? They like him. Regrettably, it’s not about emotional disposition. Personally, I see Lagerbach as a conventional, conservative coach who can’t go far with the Nigerian mentality. A focused but eccentric coach in the caliber of Jose Mourinho, but not necessarily he, is who Nigeria needs. The strategy that has worked for this country is that of discovering raw, young talents and launching them at the world stage. But having known this, we forgot and followed convention. That convention is the mad hunt for established players who already have both name and quid to complement the thinking of the establishment that the World Cup is not for boys. Now, Ghana has emphatically proved that the World Cup is indeed for boys flexed with a handful of established names. Germany confirmed it using its young men of average age 23 to thrash England’s established names.
Like Nigeria too, Cameroon went with their established, muscular men, displayed Eto’o and went home with no point. France featured its established players, mutinied and dispersed. Since 2005, Nigeria has been doing well in successive junior World Cup editions. A coach with some knowledge of Nigeria would have invited Samson Siasia, John Obu and Ladan Bosso to bring the boys that made the difference to form the core of his team, add some from the executive branch – the established names- to get a team with both delivery and experience. No. What we’ve seen is a reliance on the executives who simply play their game, and lose or win, they return to their comfort zones leaving us to pine away. We even compound our mistake by offering them huge sums forgetting however that at that level, money doesn’t motivate.
But World Cup is not club football. It is the modern form of the Roman Gladiators. It’s not just a game like the professionals want us to believe; it’s more. In it is obsessive passion, national identity/pride, detonation of hidden joy, respect, admiration, recognition, even ecstasy. Money expended remains mostly beyond the accounting books. For all these, we got one point because the strategy was wrong. The two factors that count are experience and delivery. To add experience to the home-squad, a 70/30 ratio can be developed-30% for the established legs and 70% for the nut-crackers at home. A coach can be signed on for two years for the Nations Cup, renewable for the World Cup in 2014. Within two years, he should groom 5 players with excellent dispositions per department. Part of the training should be to remove the fear of countries and their established names as well as intelligent field behavior to avoid the Kaita-effect.
Above all, the cartel at the Glasshouse deserves dismantling for as long as they remain intact, nothing will change. If we begin now, there’ll be no need for a Presidential taskforce later. For once, let’s swiftly sanitize and get things right.
