Nigeria Content Online

Jose
Mourinho hit out at Spain’s football authorities after the 0-0 draw at
Deportivo Coruna on Saturday, saying his Real Madrid players had not
been given enough rest after Tuesday’s Champions League match. The
dropped points at Depor’s Riazor stadium enabled Barcelona to stretch
their lead at the top of La Liga to seven points with 25 games played
after the champions won 3-0 at Real Mallorca in Saturday’s earlier
kickoff. Mourinho, whose side drew 1-1 in their Champions League
last-16, first leg at Olympique Lyon on Tuesday, told a news conference
it would have been easier on Real if they had been allowed to play
Depor on Sunday.

Extra day

“I don’t know what would have happened if we had played on Sunday but it would have been fairer,” the Portuguese said.

“We could have given an extra day off to those who were most tired, we could have trained an extra day,” he added.

“The calendar is
set by people who know what they are doing. They do what they want and
they will carry on like that.” Real, who twice struck a post late on,
face a stiff task to catch Barcelona and end their great rivals’
two-year reign as Spanish champions.

However, Real
director general Jorge Valdano said it would be absurd to give up on
the title with 13 matches remaining and 39 points still available.

“Nobody gives up on
the league in February so we will keep on fighting and see if we have a
bit more luck in the next few matches,” the former Argentina
international said in a television interview.

“The team played with a lot of intensity as usual but we were unable
to find the net,” he added. “We weren’t clinical enough in front of
goal and we were also lacking in luck.”

Wayne
Rooney seems likely to escape punishment for elbowing Wigan Athletic’s
James McCarthy on Saturday as the referee saw the incident and awarded
a free kick against the Manchester United striker. Rooney caught
McCarthy off the ball in an innocuous situation on the halfway line
after four minutes of the Premier League match at the DW Stadium, which
United went on to win 4-0. He was widely condemned for the action. The
referee awarded a free kick but did not caution Rooney, leaving Wigan
manager Roberto Martinez furious.

“I saw the incident clearly and the referee did as well because he gave the free-kick,” Martinez told reporters.

“Once you give a
free-kick it is quite clear that it is a red card. When you look at the
replay, it is quite clear he catches James McCarthy in the face with
his elbow.

“If one of my
players had done that, I would think he was very lucky to stay on the
pitch.” United manager Alex Ferguson, however, said “there is nothing
in it.” “But, what will happen, because it is Wayne Rooney, the press
will raise a campaign to get him hung by Tuesday or electrocuted or
something like that.

“It is unbelievable. Watch the press. It will be interesting to see it.”

United’s victory took them four points clear of Arsenal, who play
Birmingham City in the League Cup final later on Sunday. They can
stretch that lead to seven when they play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on
Tuesday.

Egypt
have asked the Confederation of African Football to postpone an African
Nations Cup qualifier in South Africa because of the recent civil
unrest in their country, a CAF spokesman confirmed on Sunday. Egypt
want the game, scheduled for March 26 in Johannesburg, to be put back
to June because of a shutdown of their premier league programme
following the riots and demonstrations that led to the toppling of
president Hosni Mubarak earlier this month. Egyptian clubs have not
played league matches since early January and the federation feels
their players will not have had the requisite preparation for the
qualifier.

CAF said they had received a request from the Egypt Football Association and would discuss it over the next few days.

It is a key game
for Egypt, who have won the last three Nations Cup finals, because they
have fallen three points behind South Africa in the standings after the
first two rounds of matches.

Only the group winner is guaranteed a place at the 2012 finals, co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Egypt have asked CAF to consider their situation a case of ‘force
majeure’, which would allow them to claim a postponement because of
circumstances beyond their control.

Ethiopia’s
Hailu Mekonnen sprinted to victory in the Tokyo Marathon on Sunday,
taking advantage of the absence of world record holder Haile
Gebrselassie. Mekonnen won in two hours, seven minutes and 35 seconds
in dazzling sunshine before paying tribute to his countryman, who
pulled out of the race after a freak training injury.

“Haile is an
incredible athlete who can be beaten by no one,” the 30-year-old
Mekonnen told reporters after shaving two seconds off his personal best.

“It’s sad and
disappointing Haile could not participate. There’s no question he would
have made the Tokyo Marathon a much better race.

“I tried to make up
for him not being here by running the best race I could possibly run.
The Tokyo Marathon is one of the biggest races in the world and I’m
very happy to have won it.” Emperor no-show Gebrselassie withdrew last
week after bruising his knees following a stumble during practice.

The 37-year-old, who clocked a fastest ever time of 2:03:59 when he
won the 2008 Berlin marathon, announced his retirement last November
only to make a dramatic U-turn days later. The no-show of the man
dubbed the “Emperor” left Sunday’s field wide open and Mekonnen began
to pull away from Kenyan Paul Biwott around the 35 kilometre mark to
claim the win. Biwott finished in 2:08:17, followed in third by Japan’s
Yuki Kawauchi, who clocked 2:08:37 to qualify for August’s world
championships in South Korea. A record 36,000 runners lined up at the
start of the race in sunny but chilly conditions in the Japanese
capital. Russia’s Tatiana Aryasova won the women’s race in 2:27:29 with
Noriko Higuchi of Japan runner-up a minute and 20 seconds behind.
Russian Tatiana Petrova was third in 2:28:56.

The
Dallas Mavericks got a game-high 25 points from Jason Terry and held
off a late charge by the Washington Wizards for a 105-99 victory on
Saturday that marked the team’s fifth straight win. Washington looked
headed for a surprise win when a 19-foot jumper from Jordan Crawford
capped an 8-0 Wizards run that tied the game at 97-97 with 1:36 left.

However, Tyson
Chandler got the Mavericks back in front with a putback, while Dirk
Nowitzki and Terry each drained a pair of free throws that gave Dallas
a 103-97 lead with 37 seconds remaining.

“You’re up nine in
the fourth early, that’s a situation where you kind of want to go up
15, ice your knees and get on the bus,” Terry told reporters. “It
didn’t happen, but at the end of the day, we want wins.” Back-and-forth
The teams exchanged the lead 10 times in a back-and-forth second
quarter before the Mavericks seized control with a 21-9 run, after
calling a timeout with 5:36 remaining, and led 59-49 at halftime.

Chandler had a
season-high 23 points and added 13 rebounds for a double-double, while
John Wall, the top pick in last year’s NBA Draft, paced the Wizards
with 24 points.

“I wanted to come
out tonight and make a statement,” Chandler said. “I really wanted to
get involved, because coming after the All-Star break, I know it’s the
stretch now here we’ve really got to get focused and make our playoff
push.” The Wizards struggled at the free-throw line missing 10-of-16
opportunities.

“If we shoot free throws we win the game, it’s pretty point blank,” Wizards coach Flip Saunders lamented.

The win moved the Mavericks (42-16) to within six games of the
Western Conference-leading San Antonio Spurs, while the Wizards
(15-43), losers of five straight, are second last in the Eastern
Conference.

The
Nigeria Football Federation has threatened to take the organizers of
the Green Bowl Soccer Tournament to FIFA for failing to notify it of
the tourney’s postponement. The Super Eagles were already in the United
Sates before receiving news of the postponement of the tourney also
known as the 2011 United States’ President’s Holiday Celebration Soccer
Tournament. While describing the fiasco as an embarrassment to the
country, NFF president, Aminu Maigari lambasted the tourney’s main
organizer, US-based Nigerian licensed agent, Pius Oleh and instructed
the NFF secretariat to make a detailed report of the fiasco to
football’s world governing body, FIFA.

“This is untenable.
How can he tell us that there was a ticketing problem after our team
had travelled that long distance to play? How can he tell us that he
did not know there was a problem until our national team arrived in
America?” demanded Maigari.

“This is totally
irresponsible on his part. How come he did not ensure that everything
was perfected before telling our team to start coming?” he further
demanded.

He added: “We are
not going to take this lightly. We will get all the documents that have
to do with the tournament, all the agreements we had with him along the
way and send these to FIFA.”

Late notice

Nigeria’s
delegation, made up of 20 players and nine officials, left Lagos for
the US city of Atlanta last Wednesday night, and arrived at Dallas’
Fort Worth Airport by 10am local time (4pm Nigerian time) on Thursday
under the impression that they would be taking part in the four-nation
tournament. However, the delegation was shocked when Oleh called to
inform them that they were having problems with ticketing outfit,
Ticketmaster, and that the competition would have to be postponed by
two weeks.

As a result, Super
Eagles coach Samson Siasia, who has long been resident in the United
States and whose wife and kids reside there, made efforts to arrange
friendly games for the side albeit to no avail.

To make matters
worse, Oleh, at short notice, also changed the team’s accommodation
plans redirecting the Super Eagles to the Marriott Courtyard instead of
the Double Tree Hotel, and then failing to meet with the team until
Friday. But regarding the tourney’s postponement, Oleh was quoted by
the media head of the NFF, Ademola Olajire as stating that he had
everything tidied up until the problem with Ticketmaster cropped up on
Thursday evening.

According to
Olajire, Oleh expressed regret that the Super Eagles had arrived in the
United States for the event before the unfortunate development but
reiterated that he had gotten the approval of the USSF for the
tournament, adding that the tournament ‘was not a scam’ and that it
would get underway in a fortnight.

But Maigari, who
cancelled his Friday trip to the United States, has disclosed that the
Super Eagles will definitely not be available for the new date.

“Pius Oleh will
first have to account to FIFA on this embarrassment,” said Maigari. “We
have no business with him concerning any new date. He should be ready
to offset all our expenses and also pay compensation. Let him play his
tournament with any team he wants.

“All the same, we apologize to Nigerians and the government for this unfortunate incident,” said Maigari.

If
Nigeria’s performance in sports in the last fifty years is reviewed,
boxing will surely rank in the top three of events that have helped
burnish Nigeria’s global image.

At the Olympic
Games, World, Commonwealth and Commonwealth Games, our boxers always
returned with laurels with some of them being in the top ten brackets
of their various weight categories.

These pugilists
kept alive the tradition of the 1950s and early 1960s when Hogan “kid”
Bassey and Dick “Tiger” Ihetu annexed world titles in their different
divisions.

The period from
independence to the early, maybe even the late, 1980s was a period of
ferment for boxing in the country both in the professional and amateur
ranks. Names like Eddie Ndukwu, Obisia Nwankpa, Dele Jonathan, Billy
Famous, Abraham “the Assassin” Tonica, Tony and Davidson Andeh, Peter
Konyegwachie, Christopher Ossai, Jeremiah Okorodudu, Joe Orewa, kept
the professional and amateur ranks bubbling with activity while earning
Nigeria positive reviews internationally.

To sustain the
tempo of activity there were a number of competitions for amateurs
notably the Eagle Belt Championships. At the pro level, our boxers
benefited from the myriad of fights promoted by Nigerian boxing
promoters.

Today, all have
gone kaput. Activity both on the amateur and pro scenes have fizzled
out with the result that our boxers when they manage to attend
international boxing competitions, become cannon fodder for their
opponents. It will be hard to tell the last time Nigeria returned from
a Grade A boxing tournaments with medals.

On the professional
scene, only Samuel Peter has kept Nigeria’s name alive even though he
has not particularly being in his elements in recent times.

Hunger within

Without using
euphemisms, boxing is dead in Nigeria, administratively that is. I
stand to be corrected, but I feel that our decline in boxing has
absolutely nothing to do with a dwindling talent base.

On the contrary,
hunger for the sport has never been stronger among our youth than at
this time. On Friday, while discussing with Paul Bankole, head of the
Directorate of Sports of the Redeemed Christian Church of God about an
amateur boxing tournament to be jointly organised by the Church and the
Office of the Special Assistant to the Governor of Lagos State on
Grassroots Sports development taking place between March 2 and 3, 2011,
I was shocked to discover that there are as many as 54 boxing clubs in
Lagos State. These are the officially recognised ones. There are others
operating at an informal level where youngsters practice their craft
hoping for a breakthrough into the big league. In Ogun State there are
equally many boxing clubs where boxers, male and female, hone their
skills.

Now, isn’t it surprising that our boxing administrators are not attempting to feed this hunger?

They seem to have reached a cul-de-sac in terms of ideas.

During my meeting
with Bankole last Friday a young lady walked into his office with a
middle aged man who was later identified as David Adekunle, a boxing
coach and manager of Achimota Boxing Club based in Lagos.

The lady who looked
smart sporting a tee-shirt over trousers turned out to be Kehinde
Obareh, a boxer who has represented Nigeria at the world championships.
She is also the second ranked boxer in the world in kick boxing. As I
interacted with her I began to feel her pain and frustration as she
told me that despite being one of the first nation to embrace women’s
boxing, Nigeria is lagging behind other nations who just latched onto
the sport because our administrators were not doing their bit.

Indeed, if you
properly assess the situation you will find that many of the
individuals who have administered boxing haven’t the faintest clue what
the sport is about. Our performance at the last Commonwealth Games in
India and its aftermath accurately captures the malaise.

The whole process
from the selection of head coach to the selection of boxers for the
games underscores the rot within the system. One thing that also
emerged from my discussions with Obareh and Adekunle was the fact that
while quality coaches are in short supply in the country, the boxing
federation has somehow managed over the years to alienate even the good
ones.

We need to get back on track. We must get our boxers particularly
the amateurs fighting again. This is one reason why the collaboration
between the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Lagos State
Government is welcome.