Nigeria Content Online

After
the 1-1 draw against Liberia on Saturday, the coach of the Nigerian
side, Augustine Eguavoen has said his team will do the business when
they meet the Liberians again in a fortnight.

This was what the
former Super Eagles coach claimed after watching his team forced to the
draw by the Liberia U-23 side. The match was played at the Samuel Kayon
Doe stadium and it was the first leg, first round of the All Africa
games qualifiers, The Nigerian team dubbed; “The Dream team V” is
expected to beat their foes after their five-star showing against
Equatorial Guinea two weeks ago.

Eguavoen said:
“They are a good side but they will not survive my team in the return
leg. They were only lucky today that my boys did not convert the
chances that came our way. Also, the pitch did not allow us to express
ourselves but the story would be different back in Nigeria”.

An angry Eguavoen also poured out his mind over the harsh treatment meted to his team on arrival to Monrovia.

“I am not happy
with the Liberia Football Federation. It’s a shame that in this
advanced stage of the game, African countries can still pull such
antics. When we arrived, they left my team stranded at the airport for
three hours, transported us to the hotel in a bus with no ventilation.
As if that was not enough, they dumped us in a hotel without power and
delayed meals, leaving my players to sleep on the floor at afternoon
because of heat and then this race course they call a pitch,” Eguavoen
lamented to Liberian press.

He however assured that Nigeria will qualify for the next round of the All Africa games by beating Liberia convincingly

Cases of theft

While the Dream
Team was on the pitch doing battle, some unidentified people reportedly
broke into the locker room of the team carting away Leicester City
midfielder, Uchechi Daniel‘s Blackberry phone and Edet Ibok’ spare
boots.

Uchechi opened
scoring for Nigeria in the 33rd minute from the spot while a Johnson
Samuel header in the 63rd minute drew Liberia level.

Nigeria failed to make it to Algiers 2007 All African Games football event.

Nigeria’s
women football team, the Super Falcons, confirmed their supremacy, at
least on the African continent, with a 2-0 win over the Namibian
national team. This followed its 7-0 victory over the Namibian team two
weeks ago in Abuja. The Nigerian ladies thus won the tie 9-0 on
aggregate. The team paraded an array of locally-based players as the
technical crew continue to work on it, in preparation for the 2011 FIFA
Women’s World Cup kicking off in June in Germany.

Though the Brave
Gladiators, as the Namibian team is known, tried their best, the
Falcons scored through Ebere Orji and a penalty converted by Stella
Mbachu, both in the first half.

Reports on
namibiasport.com.na, concede that the Falcons were vastly superior to
the home team and that they dominated the match throughout the 90
minutes of play. In the whole of the first half, the ball hardly
entered the Falcons’ area. The Namibians were forced to play
defensively as forays by Falcons attackers overwhelmed the hosts.

The Nigerians
scored the first goal when Orji took advantage of a fumble by the
Namibian defence in the 20th minute to slot the ball past the Namibian
goalkeeper, Sussana Eises. The second goal was a penalty when
Gladiators’ defender, Rejoice Kasaona, handled the ball in the box.
Falcons’ Mbachu sent Namibian goalkeeper, Sussana Eises, the wrong way
and it was game over.

The start of the
second half was almost marred by heavy rain, which seemed to invigorate
the Namibian side. The Gladiators threw everything into attack, to at
least get a goal. The onslaught was led by pint-sized striker Juliana
Skrywer. The rain however made play more difficult on a bumpy pitch. As
a result the Namibians committed more errors.

The Falcons had beaten the Namibian team 10-1 on aggregate in their
last meeting. The Falcons are billed to face the winner of the
Equatorial Guinea versus Cameroun tie.

Rafael
Nadal once again confirmed his supremacy on clay, by claiming the Monte
Carlo Masters tournament for the seventh time on Sunday, by beating
compatriot, David Ferrer in two straight sets of 6-4 and 7-5. That was
the world number one’s first Masters 1000 tournament in 2011. He had
lost in Indian Wells and Miami to Novak Djokovic, who was however
absent with an injury from Monte Carlo.

Nadal, thus enters
the history books as the first man in the Open era to win the same
tournament on seven successive occasions. A comfortable service in the
12th game of the second set saw the Spaniard take the match and the
title but not before Ferrer had broken in the ninth game to lead
briefly 5-4. At 24, Nadal has now won 44 titles.

There was three
breaks each in the first and second sets with Nadal breaking in the
third and fifth games of the first and in the third and 11th game in
the second set.

Record breaker

The 24-year-old
increased his Monte Carlo record to 39-1 with 37 consecutive wins after
opening with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Jarkko Nieminen. The world number
one followed that first round win with a 6-2, 6-4 win over number 13
seed, Richard Gasquet. He lost only four games to Ivan Ljubicic, and
then had to play three sets for the first time in the semifinal match
against Briton, Andy Murray. The loss of 2-6, in the second set was a
blip that was quickly consigned to history with his blistering 6-1 win
over an inconsistent Murray in the third set. He showed throughout the
week that he will be hard to dislodge at the top of the rankings and
improved his return serve percentage to close to 50%.

The tournament director, Zeljko Franulovic, had announced on Sunday
morning, a record-breaking attendance of 125,000 spectators. The world
number one is now fast closing on the highest number of clay court
titles in the open era. Nadal with yesterday’s win joins Bjorn Borg and
Manuel Orantes on 30 titles on clay.

McLaren’s
Lewis Hamilton went from China crisis to champagne celebration on
Sunday with a stirring victory that denied Red Bull’s Formula One world
champion, Sebastian Vettel, a fifth win in a row.

Hamilton, who made
it out of the Shanghai pit lane with only seconds to spare after
frantic work on his car’s engine before the race, hunted down his
German rival remorselessly on better-gripping tyres in the closing laps
to win by 5.1 seconds.

Australian Mark
Webber, finished third for Red Bull after starting 18th while McLaren’s
Jenson Button was fourth following a rare blunder that saw him pit in
front of the Red Bull mechanics.

Vettel now has 68
points after three races while Hamilton moved up to second overall with
47. Red Bull have 105 to McLaren’s 85 and Ferrari’s 50 in the
constructors’ standings.

“With the whole
thing that happened in the pit lane, perhaps I wasn’t even going to be
in the race,” Hamilton told reporters after a thrilling and
strategy-loaded race that left even drivers confused.

“I thought I was
going to be back with Mark,” added the Briton who gave a whoop of
delight to celebrate his and McLaren’s first win since Belgium in
August last year.

The 26-year-old,
triumphant in Shanghai on his way to the title in 2008, was the first
driver to win twice in China since the race made its debut on the
calendar in 2004.

“The car just
wouldn’t start,” he said of the pre-race problems that saw him drive
out of the garage barely 30 seconds before the pit lane closed and
without the rear engine cover installed.

Mechanics carried on their work once he was safely installed in third place on the grid.

Strategic decision

Vettel had won the
first two races of the season, after also finishing first in the last
two of 2010, from pole position and looked the favourite again after
grabbing the top slot.

His team’s decision
to go for a two-stop strategy, rather than Hamilton’s three, proved
crucial with the McLaren man making the most of his fresher tyres to
reel in the Red Bull after his final stop.

“The pace was
there,” said Vettel, who had lost out to both the McLarens at the
start. “It was there all weekend but once we decided to go to two stop
you have to be patient, look after your tyres and when it doesn’t work,
it doesn’t work.

“I saw there were seven laps to go and not much I could do,” he added.

“I don’t see second today as a disappointment, all in all we are happy with second. First was not meant to be.”

Hamilton and
Button, who started on the front row, had both screamed past Vettel at
the start with the older Englishman leading the eventual winner for the
first 13 laps.

The 2009 champion
then blew his lead on his first pit stop with a mistake that would have
embarrassed even a rookie, let alone one of the smoothest of drivers.

With Vettel
following him in, moments after passing Hamilton for second place,
Button stopped in front of the German’s mechanics who hurriedly ushered
him out to make way for their man – who was then first out again.

“I was looking down and when I looked back up I could see I was in the wrong place,” he said.

Webber charge

While the top five
were separated by less than eight seconds after more than a third of
the race, Webber was on a charge of his own.

Robbed of his
chances of winning by a technical problem on Saturday, he ran a
different strategy to his team mate thanks to having three sets of
unused option tyres due to his lack of track time on Saturday.

“I had a few sets
of tyres left over from qualifying so that helped a bit,” he said,
adding jokingly: “Maybe that is the best way to do it all the time, not
even take part in qualifying and just go from there.”

Germany’s Nico
Rosberg also enjoyed a moment in the limelight, leading after
successive rounds of pit stops for Mercedes, but his hopes of a first
career win after five seasons in Formula One faded as his team urged
him to save fuel.

Rosberg finished fifth, ahead of Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso in sixth and seventh.

Seven times world champion, Michael Schumacher, crossed the line in
eighth place for Mercedes at the circuit where he had his last podium
finish with Ferrari in 2006.

Nigeria’s
U-20 team, the Flying Eagles have met with their Ghanaian counterparts;
the Black Satellites thrice at the Africa Youth Championship (AYC),
losing on the three occasions.

However, today at
the Dobsonville Stadium in South Africa by 11.00am (Nigerian time), the
John Obuh-led U-20 team will have another chance to break the jinx as
they get their AYC campaign off the ground against the defending world
and African champions, Ghana. The other teams in the group of death,
Group B, are Cameroun and Gambia.

“We are in good
spirits since our arrival here in South Africa,” Obuh said. “We just
want to go out there and get the result we came here for. We clashed
with Ghana in an invitational tournament last year and I also watched
Cameroun play against Egypt in Dubai, so we have gathered some useful
information about these teams already,” he added.

Ghana had defeated
Nigeria 4-1 in the 2001 AYC group stages, 1-0 in the 1999 final for one
of their three titles and 1-0 in 1993 group stage.

Beaming confidence

Despite the
intimidating record of the Black Satellites, Terry Envoh, Flying Eagles
forward says his teammates are ready for today’s crunch tie.

“We have a team full of quality players who are hungry to make Nigeria proud. We will not disappoint the country” he assured.

“We are
unstoppable! There is a great understanding in the team after we
trained together for long and we all know that what is expected of us
is the cup and nothing less” he said.

Also another Flying
Eagles forward, Olanrewaju Kayode, who was a part of the U-17 team in
2009, said he and some of his teammates who could not win the 2009 FIFA
Under-17 World Cup right in front of the home crowd, hope to make up
with the African trophy in South Africa.

Meanwhile Ghana’s coach, Orlando Wellington also admits that the first game with Nigeria is quite important for his team.

“It’s one game at a
time. We can’t think beyond that game. We only have Nigeria to think
about for now, Nigeria have a good side, they are very strong. We
respect them,” he said.

“We would play to
protect our status as champions. Every team we play against would be
motivated to beat us but we want to ensure that we keep our title.

“I have enough confidence in my team to challenge for the title
again. This present squad can go on to win it,” the Ghana coach boasted.

After
Arsenal scored in the 98th minute through Robin van Persie, it seemed
that it was game on for the English Premier League (EPL) title but
unfortunately for the Gunners, they contrived to concede a penalty of
their own when Emmanuel Eboue pushed Lucas in the 99th minute. Dirk
Kuyt stepped up to take the penalty and slotted the ball to the right
of Wojciech Szczesny.

So with the last kick of the game, the Gunners handed Manchester United the advantage.

Arsenal in their
last five matches have drawn four and won one, against Blackpool. Of
the four draws, three have been at the Emirates. The Gunners now have
to be looking anxiously over their shoulders as Chelsea now sit just
two points away in third position.

So at the Emirates
with Manchester United manager, Alex Ferguson, watching on, it was the
case of two late penalties but a favourable outcome for the 18-time
champions and it could be a 19th title in some weeks time, surpassing
Liverpool as the most successful league club in England.

So with six matches
to the end of the season, it seems the Red Devils will be coasting home
to a 19th title though it is still mathematically possible for Arsenal
to overhaul United. Though the run-in favours United, Alex Ferguson’s
men still have to face Chelsea and Arsenal in consecutive matches. And
there is the distraction of the semi-final matches against Schalke 04
but United will have to lose twice and the Gunners must then ensure
that they win their remaining fixtures starting with the away trip to
London rivals, Tottenham Hotspurs on Wednesday. Arsene Wenger had stern
words with referee, Andre Mariner at the end of the match but he must
concede that his team and not the centre referee cost his team the win
they highly craved.

Stoke destroy Bolton’s FA Cup dreams

Stoke City booked
their place in the FA Cup final match against Manchester City with a
five-goal demolition of Bolton on Sunday at Wembley.

Stoke City got off
to the best of starts with three goals in the first 30 minutes through
Matthew Etherington, Robert Huth and Kenwyne Jones.

Bolton’s manager,
Owen Coyle, must have wondered whether his team had wandered aimlessly
into Wembley on Sunday, and the second half display did not in any way
improve the manager’s countenance.

Jonathan Walters
then stepped up from the City bench and added the gloss to the drubbing
with goals in the 68th minute and 78th minute to complete the most
unlikely of results.

Stoke also achieved the biggest margin of victory in an FA Cup
semifinal since 1908. The final match of the oldest cup competition in
the world will be played at Wembley on May 14, 2011.

Emmanuel
Mutai and Mary Keitany completed a Kenyan double in the London Marathon
on Sunday while moving into fourth place each on the individual
all-time lists.

Mutai broke
compatriot Sammy Wanjiru’s men’s course record in the Olympic
champion’s injury-enforced absence with a time of two hours, four
minutes and 40 seconds.

He was followed to
the finish line on a warm, sunny, spring morning by world women’s
half-marathon champion Keitany, who ran the second half of her race on
her own to clock 2:19:19s.

Keitany, who
finished third in her only previous marathon in New York last year,
holds four of the 12 fastest half-marathon times.

The pair are only
the second Kenyan couple to win the men’s and women’s title on the same
day after Evans Rutto and Margaret Okayo in 2004.

To underline the
East Africans’ dominance of the world’s most prestigious marathon,
Kenyans took five of the six podium positions with Russian Liliya
Shobukhova the only interloper.

Shobukhova, the
defending champion, broke her national record by 10 seconds but her
time of 2:20:15s for second place was almost a minute slower than
Keitany.

Great result

Only world record
holder, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and compatriots Duncan Kibet and
James Kwambai are now ahead of Mutai on the men’s all-time list. Mutai
finished second last year behind Ethiopian Tsegaye Kebede, who was
fifth on Sunday, after two fourth-place finishes.

“For me it was a great result,” Mutai told a news conference. “I became the London champion and I ran the fastest time.

“My target was to win one of the big, major marathons. At 30km I saw nobody was moving so I decided to push it hard.”

Keitany is tied in
fourth place on the women’s list with twice London champion, Irina
Mikitenko of Germany and behind Britain’s world record holder Paula
Radcliffe, Kenyan Catherine Ndereba and Japanese Mizuki Noguchi.

“I was confident,”
Keitany said. “The course was flat and the surface was good. I thought
I could run that fast.” Shobukhova added: “I thought I could catch her
but Mary was too fast. She has great speed from the half-marathon.”
Officials said 35,303 runners started the race, including 22,837 men
and 12,466 women.

Britain’s David Weir won the men’s wheelchair race for a record
fifth time, exactly 500 days before the start of the 2012 Paralympics.

If
the current momentum in the country’s national football teams,
particularly the Super Eagles, can be sustained, then Nigeria may soon
return to the good old days when its players were the toast of European
clubs in the transfer market.

This is the view of
Shina Philips, one of Nigeria’s foremost FIFA and Nigeria Football
Federation (NFF) licensed football agents. He explained that the
downturn in country’s football fortunes, which only abated recently
with the appointment of Samson Siasia as Eagles gaffer, has made many
European clubs lose faith in Nigerian players and hence look to other
countries like Ghana to get their new stock of African talent.

For instance, in
the April football rankings released by FIFA, Nigeria is in the 38th
position while Ghana is 23 steps ahead leading the continent in 15th
place.

“Everywhere in the
world, clubs crave for good players because football is big business.
If you noticed, after the USA ’94 World Cup, there was a boom for
Nigerian players because we had a good national side. Once your
national team begins to produce results, it tells the entire world that
you have more in the kitty, it tells them that if the national team
could be as good as this, then the mine will definitely have more gold
therein” he said.

It would be
remembered that in the 90’s, Nigerian players were courted by big sides
like Dutch giants, Ajax, Italian clubs like AC Milan and Juventus and
also top German sides just to mention a few.

However it’s a
different case now, where second tier leagues in Greece, Belgium and
Turkey are now the major destinations of our top stars, though one or
two players ply their trade in the English Premier League.

“I remember one of
my friends; a Dutchman who is the manager of Bonfere Jo, he always told
me that; Shina, if you can get me another player like Okocha or
somebody that plays well like Kanu, then we have a deal” Philips added.

More worry

And on a sad note,
even though Nigeria has the highest number of FIFA licensed agents on
the African continent (119), many aspiring young footballers from the
country still keep falling prey to fake football agents.

Thousands of them
litter the streets of Europe, Asia and even the Middle East, all in
search of the proverbial “greener pasture”.

Unfortunately most
end up not fulfilling their dreams and thereby truncating these talents
by wasting away and living on menial jobs for survival. Some others
actually end up signing off their life away in slavery with some of
these ‘greedy’ clubs abroad.

Philips blamed this
sad trend of players selling themselves to slavery more on desperation
on the part of the players rather than illiteracy.

“There is no effect
without a cause, this disturbing trend you are seeing now is as a
result of the desperation of the players” he said.

“We are in a time
where Nigerian players are not selling in the international market like
they used to do formerly; it is a difficult time for the market
especially for the Nigerian players” he further explained.

Also contrary to a
previous media report, where Mr Philips was wrongly quoted as saying
Nigerian players are illiterate, the Italy-based agent said that it
will be wrong to make such assertions about Nigerian players.

“It will be wrong
to say Nigerian players are illiterate, they are not. Why because
anyone that goes through the primary education, secondary school and if
they are not able to further thereafter, doesn’t make them illiterate”
he said.

“It is safer to say
that the players are not informed in certain areas but it would be
erroneous and unfair to say that these players are illiterate” He
however advised players that it is safe for them to always have a legal
adviser and to have their agents watch whatever they want to sign.

Right direction

Fortunately, the
NFF is not oblivious of the role players’ agent can play in the
development of football in the country, hence the decision to partner
with Matchmakers Consult International in organising a players’ agent
workshop. Already the organizers of the maiden two-day workshop billed
for May 13 and 14 have confirmed the availability of its resource
persons for programme.

Marco Leal, who is
coming from world football-governing body, FIFA’s headquarters in
Zurich, Switzerland, is among the resource persons for the much
anticipated programme, which the NFF and the organizers believe would
make licensed match and players’ agents, better managers of their wards
and utilise the opportunities they have.

Also confirmed for
the event is Branco Martins from the European Football Agents
Association, Musa Amadu who is acting general secretary of the NFF and
Ian Birkmyre of the UK Consulate.

Super Eagles’ head
coach, Samson Siasia; NFF’s principal legal officer, Barrister Okey Obi
and president-general of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club, Rafiu
Oladipo are also involved.

Others expected to
contribute during the workshop include the secretary of the Association
of Professional Footballers of Nigeria, Austin Popo; NFF’s Nasiru
Jibril; financial and investment advisers; television presenter,
Charles Anazodo and the executive director of the Ondo State Football
Agency. Mike Idoko.

The workshop takes place at the Four Points Hotel by Sheraton, Lekki on May, 12 and 13, 2011.

The win-at-all-costs mentality of our coaches and football administrators has long been the bane of Nigerian football.

It has bogged our
football for decades and does not seem to be easing up. One of the
manifestations of this mindset is the reliance on players who clearly
should be playing for the Super Eagles, to help shore up the fortunes
of our U-20 and U-23 teams.

We saw it at play
recently when we had to rely on players like Ekigho Ehiosun and Nnamdi
Oduamadi to help Austin Eguavoen’s U-23 team in its quest to qualify
for next year’s Olympic Games taking place in London, England.

I must concede that
there is nothing wrong for a country relying on its best young talent
to help its cause. In our case however, that attitude is the product of
laziness on the part of our administrators and coaches.

It does not take
much imagination for anyone to realise that both Ehiosun and Oduamadi
are ripe enough to fight for places in the Super Eagles, as should
Ahmed Musa, the VVV-Venlo of Holland striker whose performances for the
Eagles recently indicate he is likely going to hold down a regular
place in the squad before long.

This is why it is
difficult to understand why the Nigeria Football Federation and coach
John Obuh are growing grey hairs over the player’s release by his club.

What point are we
trying to prove with the U-23 and even the U-21, that is making us so
desperate to get these players to play for them? Does the fact that
Musa is not yet 20 years old mean he must play for the Flying Eagles?

Our biggest need

How old were Pele,
Michael Owen and Norman Whiteside when they first played for their
senior national teams? None of them was 19 years old. So, from where do
we get the idea that Musa and Ehiosun, who have shown that they have
the capacity to swing it with the Eagles, must star for our age grade
teams simply because they are young?

To come back to my
question, what is the big deal about the U-20 and U-23? For the U-20,
we have been to the final on two occasions and have reached the
semi-finals three times. Even though we have not yet won the
tournament, the question surely must be asked whether winning the U-20
World Cup is the compelling need of the moment for Nigerian football.
Would it be the defining moment of our football history if we were to
lift the U-20 diadem? Clearly not.

As for the U-23, we
lifted the Olympic trophy fifteen years ago and were in the final of
the last edition. Winning it again will feel good but will not be the
stuff of legends. The biggest need of Nigerian football as far as our
national teams are concerned is to have the Eagles fly once again to
the pinnacle of world football which they attained briefly in the early
1990s.

To get there we
need the best players we can get and it does matter if they are not yet
20 years old. One clear disadvantage of even drafting players who
should be or are already in the Super Eagles to the junior teams is
that it robs younger players who should be in those age grade teams the
opportunity to coming into prominence.

It is really sad that despite the plenitude of talent that we have at the grassroots, we keep resorting to shortcuts.

Ahmed Musa, is
without a doubt, the biggest name in the Flying Eagles team to the
African Youth Championships (AYC) in South Africa, and justifiably so,
following his achievements over the past couple of years.

Last season, while
still playing for Nigerian club side Kano Pillars, the speedy VVV Venlo
of Holland forward finished as the top scorer of the Nigerian Premier
League with a record 18 goals.

He also played a
key role in Nigeria’s Super Eagles ‘B’ team’s successful march to
victory at the WAFU Cup decided last April on Nigerian soil, and has
since then gone on to gather a handful of caps for the main Super
Eagles team, grabbing a goal in Nigeria’s recent 3-0 success over Kenya
in Abuja.

Musa, thus arrives
at the AYC, along with Flying Eagles teammates Terna Suswam and Stanley
Okoro, as one of a handful of players who have already been capped at
senior level by their respective national teams.

But even his
participation at the AYC remains uncertain, despite assurances from the
Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) that the 19-year-old will be released
by his Dutch club, who are desperately fighting against relegation from
the top flight division, for the AYC.

According to
information made available to NEXT by the NFF on Thursday, Musa will be
arriving South Africa today ahead of tomorrow’s game against Ghana.

Flying Eagles coach John Obuh also confirmed this to NEXT prior to his team’s departure for the tournament.

“That was also the information I got and it is a welcome development because he is crucial to our plans,” he said.

He added: “His teammates are already looking forward to seeing him.”

It won’t be Musa’s
first time playing under Obuh in the Flying Eagles team as he had
featured in some of the team’s pre-AYC qualification games.

But even as his
teammates await his arrival later today, he won’t be available for the
entire duration of the tournament, as he will only get to play the
opening two games against Ghana and Cameroun before returning to
Holland to play for Venlo, thus missing next Sunday’s game against
Gambia.

Obuh however hopes
qualification for the semifinals, along with a spot at this year’s FIFA
World Cup in Colombia, would have been secured by then.

“I guess that is the option available to us but we hope to have qualified for the semi-finals before our last match,” he added.