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Former tennis bad
boy, John McEnroe, said Serena Williams got a raw deal on the
foot-fault call against her in the semi-final of last year’s U.S. Open
that triggered an ugly outburst and cost her the match.

With her opponent,
Kim Clijsters, on the brink of victory, Williams was called for a
foot-fault on a second serve to go match point down. “I don’t think the
person should have been calling the foot fault at that situation,”
McEnroe said during a conference call on Wednesday to promote his
broadcast booth partnership with brother Patrick McEnroe at this year’s
U.S. Open. Fired up by the judgment, Williams erupted in anger and
yelled at the lines woman who reported her for verbal abuse. Having
already received a warning for smashing a racket, Williams was handed
an automatic point penalty for a second violation which gave Clijsters
the match and paved the way for her victory in the final. McEnroe, who
had a reputation for arguing calls during his career, said he thought
it was a questionable judgment and that the official should have warned
Williams ahead of time.

Close call

“It was very close.
I wasn’t sure it was a foot fault,” said McEnroe, who insisted Williams
would not have gained a significant edge even if she had inched forward
on the serve. “At the very least that person in my opinion should have
said to Serena, if it was happening regularly … ‘hey, listen, the
next one I’m going to have to call.’ That’s my opinion.” McEnroe said
the reaction by Williams, who shook a ball in her clenched fist and
threatened “to shove it down” the throat of the lines woman, was an
aberration for the American. “I’ve never seen her lose it like that.
There’s no doubt that she lost it far worse than I’ve ever seen her
lose it. I dare to say even worse than I’ve ever lost it,” McEnroe
said. “I had to think back in the memory banks, and I think she
possibly could have even topped me there.”

There seem to be
some natural phenomena most Nigerians are either intentionally
ignoring, or are absolutely ignorant of. Either way, the entire
country, unfortunately, is paying the price for this ignorance and will
keep on paying for a few more years, except the One who created sports
– especially football for His own pleasure, decides to have mercy on
this great nation.

One of these
natural phenomena is the fact that every human being will reap whatever
he or she has sown. You sow goodness, you reap goodness. You sow evil
and you can be sure you will reap evil. It is not possible for any
individual to sow millet and look forward to reaping rice. It has never
happened and I doubt very strongly if it will. Not only that, the
harvest is usually more than the seed sown. Plant a seed of corn and
check out the number of cobs that seed will yield from its stalk. This
is why evil sowers should know that the harvest will not be for them
only to consume- their children, grand children and even generations
after them will definitely partake in the abundant harvest. This
principle is not just natural, it is divine. That is the way God
Almighty has ordained it and no human being can change or circumvent it.

Do we have to
remind ourselves in this nation, that over the last couple of decades,
the seeds of corruption, violence, ineptitude, deception, cheating,
moral decadence, stealing, extravagant spending, abuse of power, cold
blooded murder, amongst several other horrible vices, have been planted
in Nigerian sports – especially football? Is there nobody with a
discerning spirit, who can tell fellow Nigerians the truth and nothing
but the entire truth? Must we continue to deceive ourselves that all is
well with sports, especially in Nigeria? For how long must we grope in
darkness? Do we have elders who are genuinely concerned with the state
of sports in Nigeria? Where are they, and what are they saying or
doing? When last did anything good come out of football in Nigeria? You
may not agree with my position and you are free not to, but I have a
very strong conviction; that we are now reaping some of the seeds
planted by evil doers and may have to continue harvesting for a while.
Except the Lord God Almighty rescues this nation from the grip of these
evil doers, any right thinking man or woman should not be deceived into
believing that sports will develop in Nigeria.

We are all
responsible for this. Everyone! We have all compromised one way or the
other. We have all done those things we ought not to have done, and did
not do what we ought to have done, and now sports (football especially)
is in a sorry state of anomie in this massively blessed nation. Right
now, what we experience is total abandonment of moral and social or
even spiritual values. Yet, we talk so much about praying for Nigerian
sports, we talk about God helping us. I wonder which God we are
referring to.

Neutralising Bio

Is it true that
there is already a curse on football in Nigeria as some people make us
believe? Is it true that there are some paid marabouts and prayer
mercenaries, given the mandate to ensure that Nigerian sports continue
to steadily head for the abyss? Can it be true that Bio is gradually
being neutralized and if extra care is not taken, late Ishaya Mark
Aku’s case will be a child’s play to what may befall him, if you get
the gist? The last time I heard of Bio was about three weeks ago, when
he was reported to be down with some very funny ailment. Unconfirmed
sources now claim that he has been flown out of the country for medical
treatment. Scary, is it not? Will Nigeria lose another sports minister
in such diabolical circumstances? Must some children become fatherless,
and a wife become a widow, simply because ‘the man may die’ who
determined to restructure sports in Nigeria? Must we allow this sort of
intimidation to continue in this country?

I called up a
couple of my media colleagues in order to verify some of the
unconfirmed reports about Bio and the response I got from majority of
them is alarming. A few claimed that Bio was absolutely on his own,
since he failed to “carry” sports writers along with him. A close
friend alleged that Bio almost “pour sand-sand into our garri” with his
uncompromising stance with FIFA and the NFF. Before I am branded as a
rabble-rouser, the other side of the coin may simply be that Bio has
tactically withdrawn to the trench from where he can fire from all
cylinders. After all, this is Naija, where anything, no matter how
absurd can happen.

The NFF selection

Call it election if
you are still one of those caught in the web of deception. Head or
tail, Amos Adamu is the winner; and his candidate, Tijani Yusuf, will
emerge as the next President of the NFF. But that will be the will of
man and not of God, because it is only God Almighty who decides who
will be in authority. Remember I have mentioned severally in this
column that God is the greatest sportsperson, and I am sure that if
only Nigerians will totally commit sports into His hands, He will
deliver us from the grip of enemies of Nigerian sports, parading
themselves, now, as friends. Either way, my own position concerning
FIFA’s interference with our football remains the same. Arise oh
compatriots and call the bluff of FIFA. We need the indefinite ban in
order to kill the evil seeds planted, sow seeds of righteousness that
will guarantee a bright future for sports especially football in
Nigeria. Enough is enough!

As an opening day fixture, it was just
an easy 3-0 win over Newcastle at Old Trafford but against Fulham
today, the old guard of Paul Scholes, who won player of the game last
weekend will be pulling the strings once again and has to be at his
best.

There may also be another cameo
appearance by age-less Ryan Giggs. The Welshman is in the history books
having scored in 19 consecutive Premier League seasons.

At home, Fulham are not normally easy
prospects for any team but against a vigorous United attack of Dimitar
Berbatov and Wayne Rooney, the Brade Haageland led defence may be in
for a tough day.

Fulham beat United 3-0 in last season’s
fixture, and new gaffer and former Manchester United player, Mark
Hughes, will be praying for more of that same score line. In their
opening match at the Reebok Stadium, Fulham recorded a draw and will
want to better that.

United on their part definitely have
other ideas considering the fact that they were comprehensively beaten
in December due to a raft of defensive injuries.

Close to a month after he replaced Roy
Hodgson, who took the team to the finals of the Europa Cup, Hughes is
still trying to mould Fulham to his liking and a match against the
former champions may have come too early in the season.

Striker concerns

There have been fears concerning Rooney’s form and Berbatov’s lack of goals but Alex Ferguson is not worried.

“Strikers live by
their goals. It is quite straightforward. When they are not scoring
they think they will never come. When they come they think they are
never going to finish. He is no different to any other striker,”
Ferguson said about Rooney.

Asked about
Berbatov he said, “Dimitar had the game time he needed in America
during pre-season, so his fitness is assured. There was no problem with
that and he was excellent on Monday. He could have scored three or four
goals in what was a very good performance.”

Rooney has not
scored in 13 games for both club and country although he did score
twice when United beat Fulham at Old Trafford in March.

The chance to make it three home wins against United in consecutive years will be a huge incentive for the Cottagers.

Two seasons ago,
Paul Scholes and Rooney were both sent off and Ferguson knows there
must be an improvement on this visit. “We have had a topsy-turvy time
on the last two occasions we have been to Fulham,” he admitted.

“We had nine men two years ago and last season we had gone just too
far with the injuries. It was a fragile team, with players playing out
of position and the regular defenders all missing. In that situation,
when you lose a goal it becomes very difficult, which is exactly what
happened. United have Rio Ferdinand and Owen Hargreaves injured
presently but Ferdinand is due back in five weeks.

Imagine Lionel Messi playing football
with his eyes closed or Jay-Jay Okocha making his wonderful moves while
blindfolded; that excitement is what obtains in Blind Football; a game
which is gradually getting its roots in Nigeria.

Though the country is yet make it to
the zenith of the game whose World Cup finals comes up later today in
Hereford, England, the brain behind the game in the Nigeria – Yinka
Gbadamosi – is optimistic that the country’s team, the Light Eagles
will make it to the 2012 edition.

“We are making progress every day (and)
by 2012, we should be able to make our first appearance at the World
Cup even though we might not be able to make much impact,” he said.

Gbadamosi, who lost his sight as a
young boy says his dream and passion is to see blind use their other
senses to make a living, with sports being one of the platforms to
achieve that aim.

“Losing one’s sight is not supposed to
be the end to the world. You can still do a lot with the other senses
God has given you. I use to be a goalkeeper before losing my sight but
it did not end there even after going blind,” he said.

The Blind game

Whereas mainstream
football around the world is played amidst a colourful and noisy
backdrop, the silence in the blind version of the game is somewhat
striking.

Etiquette dictates
that spectators remain quiet unless the ball goes out of play because
players need to be able to hear each other and more crucially, the
ball. The ball contains ball bearings, which means its motion makes a
gentle rattling noise that helps players to locate it.

Expectedly, the style of play is different too.

Passes cover a
shorter distance and as players try not to let the ball stray more than
a few inches from their feet, making nimble footwork and a command of
the ball vital.

Mesmeric footwork,
accurate passing and the ever-present rattling of the ball gives the
game a hypnotic quality that makes it easy to forget that the players
can’t see what they’re kicking.

There are
occasional reminders – perhaps a misplaced pass allows the ball to roll
away, or the action stops and the spectator’s gaze lifts from the
players’ feet to the unfamiliar sight of footballers wearing eye
patches.

Development in Nigeria

According to
Gbadamosi there just two teams here in Nigeria for now, they are AF
Rovers, which is run by the wife of Lagos State governor Abimbola
Fasola and Ituah Babes which is owned by Ituah Ighodalo, a Pastor.

“We hope to have
more teams come on board very soon as more people are beginning to
appreciate what we are doing,” Gbadamosi said.

Blind football was
first exhibited in Nigeria on May 2, 2008 and a little over two years
later, the game is gradually getting some attention.

Gbadamosi however
said that it has not been too rosy getting along as his organisation
has been plagued with financial challenges and some administrative
bottle necks.

“We are currently
affiliated with the Lagos State Football Association; they actually
registered us for free but we have not been able to secure registration
with the Corporate Affairs Commission and the National Sports
Commission,” he said.

While believing
that these hurdles will soon be crossed, Gbadomsi also called for
support from well meaning Nigerians, corporate bodies and more
importantly the government.

Of the Ten teams scheduled to participate in this year’s Blind World Cup, Cameroun is the only country from Africa.

Nigerians love and
know their football and are also a proud stock. We are proud of our
population – ‘150 million strong,’ we like to boast – but there seems
to be another breed of Nigerians who do not care about pride – our
footballers.

Firstly, Nigerian
players all over the world will play for any football side as long as
it is outside the shores of their country. We have had players going to
Vietnam to play professionally and unfortunately they died there. The
circumstance of returning the corpse for burial actually showed that
the trip was not worth the sacrifice.

Moving just for the money

In the current
transfer season, many have been left dumb-founded by transfer logic our
players are exhibiting – the phenomenon did not just start now. The
question on the lips of many football enthusiasts is, can our players
not play for the biggest football clubs in the world? The answer may
well be no and it is not because they are necessarily lacking in
quality.

Osaze Odemwingie,
Nigeria’s best player for 2010, formerly of Lokomotiv Moscow has just
transferred his services to West Bromwich Albion (WBA), a team that
just got promoted to the Premiership, and who were hammered by Chelsea,
6-0, in the opening weekend of the Premiership. Odemwingie has had to
take a pay cut to realise this move. But why is he paying this premium
to appear in England for a lowly club?

Odemwingie told the
BBC: “These are the opportunities you hope for when you decide to
become a footballer. This is the next chapter of my career.” Playing
for a third rate club with a dimmer chance of not being relegated than
an ice-cube melting in the open?

No other choice

Odemwingie, must
feel that time is no longer on his side, having turned 29 with no big
club offer on his doorsteps. So what makes an Obafemi Martins leave
Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga to join Rubin Kazan in Russia?

Former Super Eagles
player Garba Lawal said that it is never going to be easy for Nigerian
players to make it to the very big clubs because “we are not good
enough”.

“Even when I was
playing in Europe and Nigeria was on everyone’s lips, it was very hard
to move to those really big clubs. The Real Madrids of this world have
extensive scouting systems and if you are not in the top five of your
position then most likely, you will never get an offer. If we have
players in that top echelon, then sooner or later, they will play for
these top clubs but right now can you point to any Nigerian player that
is in the top five in his position? We can hardly get into the top 10
not to say top five.

“Another minus is
the fact that Nigeria has not performed well in the big competitions
for some time, while other African countries are doing well so the
focus is on this other countries,” Lawal said.

There are also fears that the present bunch of ‘big players’ have done nothing to help the coming generation.

Ajibade Babalade, who also played for the Super Eagles disagrees with Lawal.

“The problem that
we are having now did not start today. When we were up there we did not
do things that would have sustained us there. Simply put, we do not
have quality players coming through and it is everyone’s fault.

Are our players moving for the dollar or in the hope of bettering their careers?

Martins has said he
needed to recreate a very promising career that has gone off the track
and the move to Russia was basically a career move.

“I have to thank
the fans of Wolfsburg, my former colleagues there and wish the club all
the best for the future. I am joining a team of champions and I hope to
bring my best to the club to make them even greater.” Joseph Yobo,
Super Eagles assistant captain to South Africa 2010 is also rumoured to
be moving to Scotland on a one-year loan after being frozen out of the
Everton team.

“A number of clubs
have indicated their interest in having him, and Everton have no
objection. But the firm interest has come from Scotland and discussions
are taking place,” A sports news website reported recently.

Christian Chukwu,
a former captain, and coach of the Eagles wants everyone that has
anything to do with Nigerian football to take the current situation as
a slight that must be remedied.

“We have some of
the best players in the world, we hear it everywhere but we have not
lived up to these expectation except during the 1996 Olympics when we
won football gold. From the top to the bottom, we must start doing the
things we were doing before – getting back to the schools, if we do it
properly, ten years from now, it will be another story.”

The choice of
Arsenal football club manager Arsène Wenger as the President of the
Paris 2011 Homeless World Cup Local Organising Committee has been
applauded by Nigeria’s representative body at the annual football event.

Yomi Kuku,
Executive Director of Search and Groom – youth for development centre,
official selectors of Nigeria’s National street soccer team to the
Homeless World Cup, has sent a letter of congratulation to Homeless
World Cup President, Mel Young on the choice of Wenger.

In the e-mail message to Mel Young, Kuku said:

“This is a result
of the profound commitment by you, the HWC team in Edinburgh, the
Homeless World Cup movement and its global individual and commercial
partners as a whole, the enthusiasm and beliefs that we all share,
bringing hope to humanity that it is a world of possibilities, if we
all strive collectively to make it habitable.

“We are most happy
with the choice of Arsene Wenger, the legend, from the Gunners’ empire
and the support from football greats such as Lillian Thuram and
Emmanuel Petit.

“We at Search and
Groom (Board and Management) share in this joy with our friends and
colleagues in Paris, still one year away from bringing us to the Eiffel
Tower, working so hard and bringing the positive signs to our
doorsteps”

Wenger’s belief

Wenger joins former
professional footballers; Emmanuel Petit and Lilian Thuram, as special
supporters of the Paris 2011 Homeless World Cup.

While accepting this new role, Wenger promised to put in his best into the tournament and spoke on the goals of the tournament.

“The Paris 2011
Homeless World Cup will bring together different national teams made up
of homeless players, organised by charities who help the homeless all
year round. What is important for a guy who is homeless is to give him
a target again in life, for him to know that when he gets up he has
training. He takes a shower, has lunch and knows that he has training
again the next morning,” he said.

The tournament has
also provided an opportunity for young footballers. Early this month,
English club Manchester United paid £7.4m to sign Portuguese player
Bebe, who was raised in an orphanage after spending part of his
childhood on the streets and has represented Portugal in the Homeless
World Cup.

Beating homelessness through football

The Homeless World
Cup is an annual world class, international football tournament
inspiring 64 national grass roots football projects and over 30,000
homeless players a year to change their lives: over 70 per cent change
for the better.

The 8th edition of
the tournament comes up in Rio 2010 from September 19-26, 2010 at
Copacabana Beach, Rio, Brazil before the baton is handed to the Paris
2011 Homeless World Cup holding from August 19 – 29.

The Homeless World
Cup is supported by Nike, United Nations, UEFA, Eric Cantona and
international footballers Rio Ferdinand and Didier Drogba.

The Commissioner of
Sports Development in Bayelsa State, Opukiri Jones – Ere, has stated
that the relegation of the state’s football club, Bayelsa United,
amounts to injustice.

Jones – Ere was
reacting to the ratification of the relegation of Bayelsa United, Wikki
Tourists, Gateway and Ranchers Bees by the congress of the Nigeria
Premier League during the Super Four tournament, which held in
Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State recently.

Bayelsa United
contested the three points awarded to their opponents in an abandoned
match involving them and Wikki Tourists of Bauchi.

Documents made
available to journalists by the commissioner including the match
reports of the referee and the match commissioner, supported Bayelsa
United’s claim that the team was leading by 1-0 when fans of the home
team invaded the pitch and assaulted the centre referee and his
assistants.

In his report
centre referee, John Charles, said the match was abandoned in the 75th
minute when the home team had a free kick awarded in their favour. He
added that he was organizing the defensive wall of Bayelsa United team
when a player of Wikki Tourists cleverly kicked the ball inside the net.

The referee said he
ordered that the kick be re-taken and was about to hand the Wikki
player a yellow card when Wikki fans invaded the pitch and descended on
him and his assistants.

Charles stated that
he, alongside the other officials, was saved by the policemen who shot
teargas to disperse the unruly crowd who however regrouped later with
the Chairman of the home team leading them to their hotels later in the
evening.

“The game was
abandoned in the 75th minute because I awarded a free kick to the home
team and I instructed the Wikki player to wait for my instructions
while I measured the ten requisite yards to the away team. The player
did not wait for the whistle but instead deceitfully kicked the ball
into the opponents net,” Charles stated in the report.

“As I was going to
caution the player with a yellow card, some players numbering about
five rushed at me to protest my decision, then the supporters and thugs
of the home team encroached on the field of play and pounced on me and
the other officials” the report added.

The match
commissioner’s report corroborated the referees’ report but added that
the officials had sneaked to Jos later in the night to avoid graver
repercussions.

“How can they do
this when Nigeria Football is at the moment at a cross road and
Nigerians from all walks of life are agreed that the country’s football
should be sanitized?” Jones-Ere asked.

‘Bayelsa should accept their fate’

Usman Shehu, Wikki
Tourists Media officer who spoke on phone from Bauchi says the
allegations by Bayelsa United are untrue. He said the club’s officials
have distorted events in order to attract sympathy.

“It is not true
that any league official has favoured us. The information Bayelsa
United people are pushing around is misleading and does not correctly
reflect what really happened,” Shehu said.

The Wikki Media
officer said that Bayelsa applied to NPL that the match scheduled for
Saturday in Bauchi be shifted to Sunday whereupon NPL responded that
they should take up the matter with Wikki where they would find the
request agreeable.

“We told them that
it wasn’t possible to shift the match to Sunday as arrangements had
been concluded to have the match played on Saturday. They did not show
up for the match and so we walked them over with three points awarded
to us,” Usman said.

Usman said that
Bayelsa somehow managed to get the NPL to order a replay. He said that
on that day Bayelsa was leading 1-0 when Wikki equalised in the 75th
minute.

“After we scored,
Bayelsa players protested the goal and prevented the match from
continuing. We thought that following the rules we should have been
awarded the match but the NPL again ordered a replay, this time for
Abuja. We were in Abuja three days before the match and on the day of
the match, Bayelsa did not show up. The NPL had no choice that to award
the match to us. The league has ended and the decision has been taken
to relegate team. Wikki was also relegated and we have spent a longer
time in the league than them. Bayelsa should accept their fate. You
cannot win all the time,” Usman said.

I had wanted to
talk about the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) elections this week,
given developments in the last one week. I had to shelve it when I read
comments coming from Amos Adamu during the ‘Stakeholders Forum’, which
was held in Abuja last week.

In the comments
credited to him in some national dailies, he was laying the blame of
the rot in Nigerian sports on the influx of non-professionals into the
administration of sports particularly football.

Adamu said among other things that:

“In Nigeria today,
non-professionals have taken over the administration of football,
taking decisions without moving ahead. How do we explain that a
Nigerian coach who qualified the nation for the World Cup was sacked,
while a white man, who did not win a single match, was being praised?

“If we must excel in competitions, we must go back to the drawing board by doing the right thing.

Not until
professionals are put in charge of administration of football, the
problem besieging football in the country would persist. If we must
move ahead, we must place round pegs in round holes.”

He added:

“Nobody can
intimidate me out of sports; it is what I know how to do. Let me also
say that it here that I will take responsibility for my actions and
those of my workers, but the truth is that most of the people talking
have no stake and they don’t know what they are talking about. So, you
can only sympathise with them because they don’t know”.

He went on to take a swipe at sports journalists for promoting mediocrity in the reporting of sports.

Coming from another
individual, it would have made some sense but from someone who occupied
some of the most important positions in Nigerian sports and failed to
contribute to its development, it is downright insulting to Nigerians.

It is interesting
that Adamu says non-professionals have been running football in Nigeria
and have thus been responsible for running it aground. It would have
helped for him to have been specific by mentioning names since he says
he cannot be intimidated by anybody.

Since he has not we
can only assume that he is merely punching air. But to engage him all
the same, let’s cast our minds back to the last election held into the
board of the NFF in 2006; the election that produced the board whose
tenure just ended. Can Amos Adamu tell Nigerians how Sani Lulu got to
become Chairman and later president of the federation or is he claiming
ignorance? Can he come clean and let everyone know how Amanze
Uchegbulam and his shadowy ‘Stakeholders’ were instigated into to
hounding Ibrahim Galadima the then NFA boss out of office?

Nigerians would
like to know the role he played in getting Urs Linsi, then FIFA
Secretary General to supervise the removal of Galadima, who by the way
was championing autonomy of the football federation, a cause he, Adamu
pretends to support.

If his memory is short, that of a good many Nigerians are not.

Even moving from
football, let’s look at Adamu’s accomplishments in office as Director
of Sports Development. If you add up the total number of years he spent
in that office plus the time he spent as Director General of the
National Sports Commission (NSC), we are looking at nothing less than
ten years.

Now, in the scheme
of things that office happens to be the brain box of the sports
establishment in Nigeria. It is there that strategies for developing
sports from the grassroots through the whole gamut of designing
programmes for elite athletes, the national institute of sports and
other ancillary agencies should emanate.

No useful ideas

What was Adamu’s score card before he was kicked out of the sports commission by late President Yar’Adua?

Is Nigerian sports better off because he occupied the strategic office of sports development director? Is it worse off?

The answer is
obvious – Nigeria has gone ten years without an Olympic gold medal; we
have gone eleven years without a single medal at the athletics world
championships; we have repeatedly come up short in a number of
continental and international competitions like the All Africa Games
and the Commonwealth Games.

Again, because
Adamu failed in his job of designing a blueprint for the development of
Nigerian sports, we have become very comfortable with cheating. Without
a tinge of conscience we field thirty-year-olds in competitions meant
for children under 17 years of age.

Today, Nigerian
sports is tottering. We have failed to take advantage of both our
numerical strength and prodigious amount of talent. Adamu failed to
provide the needed direction while he occupied important offices in
Nigeria’s sports establishment.

While Nigerian
sports founders, Adamu’s career has blossomed. At the moment he
occupies important positions in world football. As Chinua Achebe
reminds us in his epic, Things Fall Apart, those whose palm kernel has
been cracked for them by benevolent spirits should not forget to be
humble.

Amos Adamu has come this far because Nigerian sports provided him
the platform, he should think of ways genuine ways of showing gratitude
instead of dismissing critics of his non-performance in office as
ignorant.

As the election date into the board of the Nigeria Football
Federation draws near (three days to go), one of the contestants in the
election into the board of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Segun Odegbami on
Tuesday sent a petition to FIFA President Sepp Blatter on the illegality of the
election and why it must not hold.

Odegbami wants Blatter to ask the Electoral Committee to request
for and collate evidence from all proposed voting delegates to the elections
and ensure that they are first duly elected in their states and ensure that
their tenures since their last elections have not expired.

Secondly, Odegbami is asking Blatter to prevail on the Electoral
Committee to publish the list of old delegates and that any one that voted four
years ago cannot vote again without evidence of having being re-elected or
re-appointed.

The statutes must be
followed

He is also asking that the Electoral Committee must insist that
the 2010 Statutes of the NFF must be followed.

“The 2008 decision of the Congress in Makurdi is faulty and is,
therefore, not binding on the state FAs,” he said, adding that “the dates of
elections into the various boards of the members cannot be dictated by the NFF
congress but by the congress of the different bodies and that they all are free
to go back and conduct their elections in accordance to their statutes”.

Odegbami continued his petition, saying “In consideration of the
above, that the present situation of discontent amongst those participating in
the present elections, the national elections be delayed for a short period to
allow the State FAs and other members with a similar situation, to conduct
their own elections.”

Blatter has to step in

The former Eagles captain reminded Blatter that the NFF ignored
his suggested amendments to the statutes sent for his approval.

“Once again I draw your particular attention to Articles 19, 20,
21, 22, 23 and 24 in the draft statutes. In the new statutes they have all been
correctly and completely removed from the statutes. The local football councils
are not even directly affiliated to the NFF and should not have been in the NFF
Statutes. They are members of the state FAs. The state FAs and the Leagues are
just two members out of many that constitute the NFF. All the members of the
NFF are independent bodies with their own constitutions or statutes and whose
affairs must not be interfered with by any external bodies including the NFF.

These are your words in your letter of November 2, 2009, to the
NFF: “Art 10 par 4 of the NFF Statutes interferes in the organisation of the
members of the NFF which should organise themselves without any external entity
including the NFF”.

Odegbami concluded by saying only three of the 37 members of the
present NFF have not exceeded their 4-years tenure by July 2010.

“I can specifically confirm that Ogun State, to which I belong,
conducted its election into its present board in the year 2005. Lagos State
conducted theirs in 2004. Most others are like that.

All the States would have, on their own, conducted their various elections
at the times when their tenures expired but for the NFF Congress decision taken
in the year 2008 in Makurdi that directed all States to hold their elections in
November/December 2010. This it did not have the power to do.”

The crisis that engulfed the French Football Federation (FFF)
has been settled with French striker, Nicolas Anelka, being banned from playing
at international level for 18 games after an argument at the World Cup which
led to the team going on strike.

The Chelsea striker launched a verbal tirade at former French
coach Raymond Domenech at half-time during the 2-0 defeat by Mexico in South
Africa. Domenech the sent the player, more famous for sulking than his silky
skills, home.

After Les Bleus were disgraced out of the World, the FFF set up
a committee to establish the truth behind what happend, and to learn lessons
for the future. Consequently, on Tuesday the disciplinary commission handed out
the decision which effectively brings Anelka’s international career to an end.

In a career that spanned 13 years, Anelka earned 69 caps and
scored just 14 goals. He won the 2000 European Cup and the 2001 Confederations
Cup with France.

Face saving move

It was the decision to send Nicolas Anelka home after his rant
at Domenech that led to the player’s strike, and disharmony in the squad.

Patrice Evra, as national skipper, bore the brunt of the
criticism, but the Manchester United full-back claims he did his best to keep
the calm.

Anelka said all the players were united in the action to boycott
training to protest Domenech’s apparent high-handedness.

“If there were some players who wanted to train – when the squad
went on strike, they should speak now. If I had not started it, it would have
been somebody else. The situation was explosive.”

The FFF was further infuriated as Anelka refused the pleas of
President Jean-Pierre Escalettes to apologise to Domenech.

This may however just be a saving face technique as even before
the face-off with their coach; performances on the field had proved a major
source of disappointment to fans which was not helped by the players’ off-pitch
misdemeanours.

Other players who earned penalties for their roles in the strike
received lesser punishment. Patrice Evra was banned for five matches for
leading the boycott. The FFF also banned Bayern Munich’s Franck Ribery for
three games and Lyon’s Jeremy Toulalan for one.

Ribery did not appear before the commission as his club, Bayern
Munich, refused to release him. Anelka also did not show up.

The fallout from the incident saw Domenech face the French parliament
and the country’s new coach, Laurent Blanc, drop all 23 of the World Cup squad
members for last week’s friendly match with Norway.

France lost 2-1.

Eric Abidal however, escaped without sanction despite refusing to play in
Les Bleus’ last group match against hosts South Africa, which the French lost
2-1. France – winners in 1998 and finalists in 2006 – lost two games and drew
one in South Africa.