LIKE CHELSEA FC. (UN)LIKE NIGERIA

Chelsea football club entered into the 2015/2016 football season as champions after winning the league the previous year. The season looked promising with in form and currently crowned PFA winner Eden Hazard in sparkling form the previous year, also with the mercurial manager Jose Mourinho still in the saddle.

New players Radamel Falcao,Asmir Begovic etc. were recruited to bolster and reinforce the team after selling/loaning off some players the club deemed surplus to requirements notably amongst them was the goalkeeper Petr Cech who had kept a record of 220 clean sheets at the London club in all competitions for about 11 seasons.

A sign of things or rather poor season to come became evident when by the end of 2015, the team was lying in 14th position with only 20 points in 19 matches averaging 1.05 points per game (at this time Mourinho had been sacked and replaced with Gus Hiddink).It was unthinkable how a team that won the premiership 7 months earlier…...

http://raisepams..com.ng/2017/05/like-chelsea-fc-unlike-nigeria.html

Complete the story here. I am not going to any blog to read the rest.

izombie:
Complete the story here. I am not going to any blog to read the rest.

LIKE CHELSEA FC. (UN)LIKE NIGERIA

Chelsea football club entered into the 2015/2016 football season as champions after winning the league the previous year. The season looked promising with in form and currently crowned PFA winner Eden Hazard in sparkling form the previous year, also with the mercurial manager Jose Mourinho still in the saddle.

New players Radamel Falcao,Asmir Begovic etc. were recruited to bolster and reinforce the team after selling/loaning off some players the club deemed surplus to requirements notably amongst them was the goalkeeper Petr Cech who had kept a record of 220 clean sheets at the London club in all competitions for about 11 seasons.

A sign of things or rather poor season to come became evident when by the end of 2015, the team was lying in 14th position with only 20 points in 19 matches averaging 1.05 points per game (at this time Mourinho had been sacked and replaced with Gus Hiddink).It was unthinkable how a team that won the premiership 7 months earlier found itself at the bottom rung of the table.

However, the team was able to finish in 10th position by amassing additional 30 points for a total of 50 points.

The Chelsea FC. management needed to restore the club to glory, get back to winning ways and win back the fans’ support as quickly as possible, thus Antonio Conte was brought in as the club’s next manager.

Conte was coming on the heels of near-success achievement with the Azzurri at the Euros where they defeated tournament favourites Spain in the second round and lost to Germany on penalties at the quarter-finals-a game they should have won had Simone Zaza converted his spot-kick after extra time.

The club entered into the 2016/2017 season without any continental action which in some way would allow the new manager achieve the club’s management target of at least a fourth place finish at the end of the season.

As easy as it looked and sounded, achieving fourth place could also be very difficult bearing in mind that most coveted and world class players, more often than not, would want to play champions league football and would not sign for Chelsea-Naingollan of Roma football club easily comes to mind. This meant that Conte would make do with the players at his disposal with little or no new signings.

Players were released from their loan spells at the club, some were sold while a handful were brought in i.e. Ngolo Kante to strengthen the squad and at least qualify for champions league football the following season. Things looked bright.

By the end of September 2016 however, the club was 8th on the table. Deja vu? No thanks to defeats to Liverpool FC and Arsenal FC which gave the coach a rude shock, an awakening call and a rumour of an imminent sack was brewing at the bridge with fans calling for Roman Abramovich (club owner) to wield the big stick on Signore Conte as he had done to past managers in years 2004, 2007, 2008,2009,2011,2012 and 2015.Or maybe thanks to those defeats. Non è stato licenziato ma ha dato un'altra possibilità.

If there is anything the Italians are known for, it is been highly tactical and meticulous. Remember Giovanni Trapattoni (il Trap)? Marcelo Lippi? Nereo Rocco? Arrigo Sacchi? Fabio Capello? These were tactical coaches who could switch formations at will and get results. Conte isn’t any different; he went back to the drawing board: tweaked his formation, identified players who would fit his new style of play (he had a best 11 made up of players from 7 different countries and none from Italy) kept his family in Italy to avoid distractions and bingo, he won the league against all odds with a record 30 wins.

Nigeria entered the year 2015 with so much promise, political activity and economic boom (maybe on paper).The country’s national accounts had been rebased in 2014 thus making the country the 26th largest economy in the world with an estimated GDP of $509B. This didn’t mean anything to the common man on the street or the market women in Oyingbo market because cost of living was high and the country’s national per capital poverty was over 60%.

Cost of doing business was high with many companies folding up or relocating their business to other African countries. Insecurity was rife in the North while kidnappers held sway in the south. Things were bad just like the case of Chelsea FC and there was need for a change, a quick one at that and the 2015 general elections couldn’t have come earlier.

Nigeria general elections were billed to hold February 14 2015 to elect or re-elect new leaders to run the affairs of the country for the next four years but to the amazement of all (well almost all), the elections were shifted by 6 weeks to March 28 by the electoral commission to allow the commission distribute the voter’s cards, and allow the military crush the Boko haram insurgents in the North. Really?

The tag on the then administration as being clueless, corrupt and wasteful made the general populace troop out en masse to vote out Goodluck Jonathan and instead elected a 73-year old retired general-Muhammadu Buhari who had promised so many incentives, people-friendly programmes and welfare packages for the citizenry during election campaign. There was hope for the country at last. We believed him and gave him our votes. Antonio Conte had promised a return to champion’s league football for the Stamford bridge faithfuls. They believed him and supported him.

Few months into the administration of the Buhari-led government, things had got worse, prices of foodstuff were out of the reach of the common man, dollar rate to the naira had doubled, companies that could not cope with high cost of running their business embarked on mass sacking of their work force, kidnapping was the order of the day, while the president ran a one-man show without constitutionally required ministers.

Things became unbearable and so bad that some people in some quarters were calling for a military intervention on the government as it was in years 1966,1975,1976,1979,1983 and 1993 which was akin to Chelsea fans’ request of sacking Antonio Conte.

After about six months into the administration of Buhari, the president changed tactics. He appointed ministers ('his best 11') who immediately swung to work, the CBN introduced fiscal policies to salvage the economy, the Nigerian Army was battling the insurgents on another hand, investors were courted to come invest in the the country, bail-out funds were granted to states that couldn’t meet recurrent expenditure and so many other initiatives that the government took just to revive the moribund economy. All to no avail. Alas the country went into severe recession for the first time since 1984 due to a lump in the country’s main export commodity and cash cow-oil. Interestingly, Muhammadu Buhari was at the helm of affairs of the country at that time. Deja vu?

Today, the president is ill and receiving treatment in a London hospital for an undisclosed ailment.
One can argue that Buhari inherited a bleeding economy painted beautiful on the surface from the Jonathan administration, falling oil prices, high rate of corruption (gravest in the history of the country) backlog of workers’ salary unpaid, internal and external debt, etc. but posterity would place Buhari in the nation’s history books as the man who led Nigeria into recession-again.

Antonio Conte didn’t dwell on the 2015/2016 subpar performance of Chelsea, he carved a niche for himself, he identified the problems and found answers within the team of players at his disposal. He benched those that were not aligning with his philosophy and target to achieve his aim and brought back players he felt could help his cause during the campaign i.e. Nathan Ake who was initially loaned to Bournemouth.

Unlike Chelsea FC,the current administration has 'powerful ministers’ and untouchable members of the president’s kitchen cabinet-whatever that is-who do next to nothing in the government while there are millions of Nigerians out there if given the chance could make a meaningful impact on the economy and polity.

Chelsea got out of its crisis simply because they had a determined manager backed by loyal team members-playing and non-playing staff-who cooperated with him from start to finish. He bent rules where he had to just so as to get results: he was hard where and when necessary and never lost sight of his goal.

If we are waiting to be producers of pencil in 2018, then we have a very long way to go. If as youths all we want to do is to take selfies with the politicians instead of telling them the hard truth and making them sit up to do the needful or we go bashing and abusing one another on social media, turning ourselves into e-warriors all in the name of supporting politicians from one’s region, tribe or religious affiliations, then we shouldn’t complain if they don’t do what they ought to do in terms of delivering dividends of democracy and the joke will forever be on us.

Truth be told, have we not noticed that the politicians are fixing their children in political positions in the country while we are made to play second fiddle to them. The same families have been ruling since time immemorial.

Are there no better, more qualified Nigerians to lead the country irrespective of their social status and background?

If we must fix the country, we must go the Chelsea way.

· Get the best brains (best 11)
· Put aside tribal, political, and religious sentiments
· Don’t dwell too much on the past, learn from it and move on
· Enact welfare policies and create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive
· Create jobs and improve infrastructure nationwide
· Communicate more with the people
· Do away with any form of Cabal
· Above all, have the fear of GOD