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Nigeria will square
up against Argentina on June 12, a day made remarkable by Nigeria’s
former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida.

A good many
Nigerians are running scared of the outcome of that encounter. Given
our history going into the match coupled with the fire power at the
disposal of the Argentines, it is easy to understand why most Nigerians
believe our Eagles are going to have their feathers plucked by Diego
Maradona’s men.

Nearly all my
friends and football fans I have talked to predict a bag full of goals
for the Super Eagles, with many saying Nigeria will trail the South
Americans by at least three goals by half-time. My assurance that that
may not necessarily be the case has been nothing but cold comfort to
them.

I am not scared of
the Argentines. I know they have enough in their arsenal to sink even
the most fortified armada. But as we have come to see again and again,
even the best trained marksmen sometimes miss target.

A history of upsets

As a student of
history, I know that the FIFA World Cup is replete with instances where
even the most formidable squads buckled under the weight of expectation.

The same Argentina
we are talking about went into the 1990 edition of the World Cup as one
of the teams tipped to win the championship (indeed, they went all the
way to the final of that tournament only to lose to a much organised
West German squad) but what did they have waiting for them on the
opening day of the tournament?

The star-studded
Argentine squad boasting among others, Diego Maradona, Claudio
Caniggia, Jorge Burruchaga, Roberto Sensini, Nery Pumpido, and Oscar
Ruggeri, fell 1-0 to an unheralded Cameroonian side with half of its 22
players playing in the Cameroonian league. Of course, that was not the
first time an African side would be humbling a football power house.
Eight years before, their African brothers, Algeria, had scalped
two-time champions at the 1982 edition of the tournament in Spain.

To come back home,
our own Super Eagles stunned the world when they scored three times
against Spain to run away 3-2 winners in their opening group game of
the 1998 World Cup in France. Before that match nobody, not even the
players themselves, would have wagered they would beat the Spaniards
who had gone on an unbeaten run of over thirty matches, during which
they played the top teams in the world.

But we beat them.
Why? For the simple reason that the boys were fired up, and not
necessarily because they were among the finest players in the world.
Then as now, Nigerians felt the Eagles were a bunch of talent but
undisciplined players incapable of accomplishing big things.
Disparaging comments of Nigerians about them filtered to the boys in
France and they were determined to prove a point against Spain and
prove it they did. While the Eagles this time around may be lacking the
quality of the 1998 squad, two factors may work to their advantage.

Keen competition

In the first place,
the competition for shirts in the squad is keener than it had been in a
long while. Lagerback’s late arrival on the scene and the fact that
none of the players in the current team has played under him before,
means that they will go the extra mile to impress him and secure places
in the squad. The game against Argentina will be their first real
opportunity to show the Swede what they are capable of, and this means
they will go full throttle against the South Americans.

The second reason
our boys may not roll over for the Argentines has to do with the
quality of the Eagles bench. Granted that Lagerback has not spent
quality time with the players, the Swede is a wily old tactician who,
having led a squad against the South Americans at the 2002 Korea/Japan
World Cup, will find a way to checkmate them. Pound for pound,
Lagerback is rated a better coach than Maradona, whose unpredictability
may play into the hands of his opponents at the World Cup.

The World Cup is a
coach’s tournament. Yes, the best players on the planet show up there
but left to themselves, they cannot accomplish much. It requires the
genius of the coach to turn them to a winning team. Proof of this can
be found in the inability of Brazil, with their alluring style of play,
to win the World Cup for twenty-four years after their triumph in 1970
in Mexico. Their 1994 squad, which won that year’s edition of the
Mundial, lacked the flair and fluidity of either the 1978 or 1982
squads, but still went on to win the tournament due to the tactical
changes made by coach Alberto Parreira.

So, as we wait for
the Eagles to file out against Lionel Messi and company on Saturday,
let us breathe easy. The worst may not be upon us.