THE EAGLES STILL SUPER?

Once again, the Super Eagles failed to qualify for AFCON. 

The Nigerian football is like the Nigerian political system. It rubbishes anybody no matter how good you are.

When the Super Eagles failed to qualify for AFCON 2012, NFF brought in an ex-captain to manage the team. They gave him a target which he surpassed. He won us the Nations Cup in 2013, qualified us to World Cup in 2014 and took us to the second round.  A great feat by all standards. 

But we are never good at managing success. We gave him the treatment we gave Amodu Shuaibu and Christian Chukwu before him. We messed him up, said he had lost ideas, that he knew nothing. To be sure, the man had his attitudinal issues, no doubt, but he delivered results, which was all that mattered.

NFF couldn't manage his attitude. We brought in a "magician" with impeccable attitude, a man we were told was Africa's Pep Guadiola. Some of us raised our voice against the new Pep Guadiola with no practical coaching experience whatsoever but they never listened. To compound matters, the Nigerian Pep Guadiola was to manage the national team from his base in Belgium.

The Pep Guodiala who is a Nigerian and ex-captain of the team, by the way, didn't waste time. He tore the team apart, sacked the captain and dismantled the structure his predecessor left on ground. Issues ensued; arguments started; egos started going haywire and employer and employee relations developed into a media high-haga as was the case with the ex-captain who won us the Nations Cup in 2013.

The result of the strained employer-employee relations was that we failed to make it past the group stage of CHAN 2016. Add this to a wobbly-fumbly campaigns in  AFCON qualifiers. The magician called Pep Guadiola of Africa saw what was ahead and quit via Twitter. 

And the egg-heads in NFF once again called on the mercenary who had failed in a 2011 salvage operation to come try to salvage the team once again. He was given a consortium of other coaches to work with.

Coach Samson Siasia, not a bad coach by the way, did his best, but like in an earlier such operation, the damage had already been done. And he failed in the assignment. For the second time. And 170 million Nigerians are heart-broken.

If Nigeria were a country, some people in the Glass House should be resigning by now while others would be telling us what magic they have next. But no! Such does not  happen in our clime. Instead these same inept football administrators would be scheming to have a foreign coach imported because through him their bread would be mightily buttered. They would threaten us with FIFA ban if government dared to ask questions. Yet they don't waste time to run to the same government for subventions. Apparently FIFA abhors government having a hand in the running of football but not in dolling out cash to football associations. 

We are a great emotional people. We like to hear lies and excuses coated in sugar. We do not appreciate truth and forthrightness. We are like woman. We easily get carried away by what we hear. We like sweet words, even if they are lies. 

This is why both in our sports sector and in the political arena, truth is not appreciated. The bearer of truth is often an endangered species. And so, most carefully avoid telling the truth. Yet, our country and everything about it continue to get from bad to worse. 

The Nigerian football already had a foothold before most European nations. The defunct Nigerian Football Association (NFA) was already established and running before the UEFA. Surprisingly while European nations are today miles ahead football-wise, our football continues on its path to rapid retreat. We never seem to ever get our acts together at the senior level of football. Watching the Super Eagles play today is like serving an emotional punishment.

The problem is not that we lack the manpower or the wherewithal. The problem is that, like in the political arena, we allow three monsters to determine our course of action – corruption (read selfish interest), religion and ethnicity. Another problem is that we often assume we know it all and that other people know nothing even when evidence suggests otherwise. We never learn from experience. While other people are preparing and developing their football we are often engaged in petty squabbles. Need I continue? No.

We have a long way to go.