Nigeria Content Online

Last week Lars
Lagerback, Super Eagles coach, released a provisional 30-man World Cup
team list. Without mincing words, a lot of us were disappointed by some
of the names on that list because the signs are emerging that this man
will also toe the route of disappointment of sacked former manager,
Amodu Shuaibu. As a result cause grief to millions of Nigerians who
have reposed their trust in him and felt that his coming will witness a
break from the past where call up to the national team was based on
other criteria apart from merit.

A lot of Nigerians
find it incomprehensible that Lagerback who has been in football
management at the national team level for some time now, can behave
like an amateur and come up with a provisional list for the world’s
biggest football fiesta made up of largely unfit, half fit, perpetual
bench warmers and very old men when such an occasion demands that only
fit, regular playing, youthful and ambitious players represents the
country.

Serious business

The World Cup is a
stage for every serious nation to showcase its football potentials as
captured in its youths. It is serious business and not a tea party or
valedictory session for retiring footballers. By this list, Lagerback
wants to go and insult our national pride on the world stage by
parading very old men and benchwarmers who are too weak, unambitious
and don’t even understand the enormity of the task before them. Is it
that the change of environment has made Lagerback forget the basic
requirement of the competition he’s going for? I hope not.

We had a good run
in the USA 1994 World Cup because our team was composed mainly of
quality youthful, fit and regular playing boys who donned the national
jersey on merit and were very eager and ambitious to make a name for
themselves and the nation. We only lost out to Italy in the second
round because we had a technically bereaved bench headed by a merchant
who was already calculating the largesse that would follow from
qualification into the quarter finals through the sale of his players
rather than the much trumpeted excuse that the team’s failure was due
to inexperience.

Oh, how one wished
he was a prophet like those in the Holy Bible of old whom God bestowed
with the gift of seeing into the future, then one would have seen that
this is the road Lagerback will travel on and would not have been a
strong campaigner for the dismissal of Amodu Shuaibu even though he was
technically incompetent in the first place.

I’m even more than
pained when I consider that apart from the damage to our hope, faith in
him and national pride, our reward for investing the huge amount of
money used in hiring him is disappointment and heartache, when we take
into cognizance the fact that such money instead should have been used
to address some of the societal and infrastructural problems
bedevilling us as a people.

That the Nigerian
people were unanimous in the call for the sack of Amodu Shuaibu right
from the day he was appointed as Eagles manager wasn’t because we hated
his face or his skin colour after all we are Black and proud people.
Rather it was predicated on the fact that we believed he wasn’t
competent to lead the senior national team of Nigeria and that his
appointment was based on other considerations apart from merit.

We intensified the
clamour for a foreign technical manager because the continued stay of
Amodu and his miserable team was dangerous to our health after God had
seen some of us through the heartache that we were all subjected to and
also because we desired a national team that is made up of very fit,
youthful, energetic, ambitious and regular playing players chosen on
merit, who understands what it means to represent the most populous
black country on earth like the Eagles of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. In
this Lagerback provisional team list, am afraid that we may find it
easier for the camel to pass through the eye of the needle than find
just a handful of players who fit into this category.

While one
acknowledges that the time is too short for Lagerback to assemble a new
team bearing in mind the enormous task ahead, at least one expected him
to call up a few set of energetic and fit youngsters who are ambitious
no matter where they are playing so that they can get the required
experience early enough instead of these set of players most of whose
sun has set. At least, I know some of the players in the present list
who are going to call it quit with football totally because of old age
after the competition if they eventually make the world cup team.

So what national
purpose will it serve including such old men in the world cup team? The
time and resources involved in prosecuting the world cup proper is too
serious to be waived for personal considerations. All these media hype
of including some old men whose limbs can hardly carry them for the
sake of experience in the world cup team are lies, illogical and don’t
make sense.

Ekujumi sent in this piece from Ikeja, Lagos