By Emenike Acheru, media officer, Dolphins FC, Port Harcourt SourceThe debate is on, the people are raging, and the question is, “why did the Eagles fail in South Africa?” If the Eagles failed at all.
Chief blame must go to the Nigerian football governing body; Nigeria Football Federation for being swayed by a section of the Nigerian media that said the former coach of the team, Shuaibu Amodu should go.
The media, unhappy that he did not do their bidding and that he “insulted” them during a press briefing, waged a campaign of calumny against him.
Comments like him not being technically sound for the World Cup, his refusal to use home-based players, his aging team and a squad full of bench warmers were freely used and the Nigerian populace bought into it.
The media said he dropped players from the Cup of Nations team without a training session and that players like Yakubu Aiyegbeni paid their way into the team.
They argued about him using three defensive midfielders in a game yet failed to realise that the coach knew the strength of his team and played accordingly. Most of all they said the Eagles did not play pretty football forgetting that we were doing just enough to win.
Lies all the way
For their part, NFF refused to heed the warning that history would not be on Nigeria’s side if we let go of our coach. They refused to listen to the advice that no serious country sacks its coach in a World Cup year.
Sani Lulu and his team refused to trace history, which showed that Nigeria’s best performance at the World Cup so far had been when the coach who qualified the country actually took the team to the World Cup.
The same section of the media who deceived Nigerians said a new coach, a foreign coach would entirely change the structure of the team.
They said he will scout Europe for hungrier players; they said with his clout he would be able to convince people like Dennis Aogo, Victor Moses and Nedum Onuoha to play for Nigeria.
They said he had four months and that was enough for any serious coach to prepare a country for the World Cup but these were all lies.
A few of us warned them of FIFA windows and how the new coach would have just three weeks to train the team; a few of us warned them of how the players the former coach used were our best and would still be at the World Cup; but most of all a few of us warned that it would be suicidal to sack a coach four months to a World Cup since we had tried it before and it backfired.
But the deed had to be done. The coach was sacked, Lagerback was hired.
He immediately said the Nigerian team had the potentials to play in the semi finals, a lie, just to get the job but Nigerians believed him.
He started talking about players like Solomon Owello, Marvin Ogunjimi, Victor Moses and lots others completely deceiving his employers and most Nigerians but not some of us who knew.
We stood by our grounds that the majority of the players who featured in Angola would be in South Africa
Same old story
Eventually, Lagerback on fifty million naira salary monthly (the former coach was on two million) named a team of 44 players and dropped 14 without a training session.
The same old legs and bench warmers made the World Cup team, the Eagles played three defensive midfielders in a match and after 250 million naira gone in salaries we had a horrible World Cup outing.
It is clear to Nigerians now that the NFF made a mistake by sacking the former coach but are too embarrassed to say it and will now do anything to exonerate Lagerback from the blame.
The NFF must take the blame for sacking Shaibu Amodu. That was where the initial mistake was made.
The sports writers must take a part of the blame for putting sentiments before their jobs, which was to report the news.
Then Lagerback must take his share of the blame for his incompetence.
Do the players have a share in the blame? No, certainly not. Somebody picked them. Unless we want to argue that they also paid their way into the team.
And some of us who knew always said we do not have world class players like our press have deceived Nigerians into believing. Our players are below average, maybe on the same level as the Greek or Slovenian players so they gave the performance their level could reach.
The Eagles may not have done better and maybe they could but we will never know because Shuaibu Amodu did not take them to the World Cup, but the performance could not have been worse.
And that makes us ask the question, “Why give a coach a contract for the World Cup if the plan is not to win the World Cup?” Why assure Nigerians we will go as far as possible in the Cup when we had a clueless coach who came in just for the big pay day?
The way forward is that Lagerback must go, the NFF board members must honourably resign and Nigeria must start afresh.
We must begin to look inwards at our coaches, at our league, at our own.
And the good thing about it is that we have four years to prepare.
Stephen Keshi or Samson Siasia or a combination of the two will make mistakes along the way but between now and 2014 they can give us a team that Nigerians and the World will be proud of.
But for now, first things first, let the NFF board resign and let Nigerians make a fresh start.
History is a great teacher. We fell by the wayside because we ignored history.
I hope we have learned our lesson this time. |
exactly this is what would happen if we retain lars, he would tell us that he would find new players, only for him to call up yakubu,yobo again in september, by then it would be too late because we have already signed him on a 4year contract. |
