|
THE SUPER EAGLES' QUALIFICATION FOR THE WORLD CUP TOURNAMENT; MATTERS ARISING By The Super Eagles’ victory over the Ghanaian Black Stars on Sunday July 29th brings into bold relief a certain dreadful disease that afflicts our society. This disease has been aptly described by the irrepressible late Afro-beat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti as ‘colo mentality’ The disease permeates almost virtually all our public activities and some private domains too. Many institutions in our society encourage us to doubt our own ingenuity, capability, and competence; we look for the imprimatur of credibility and credence from outside to validate our own efforts. This attitude informs why we were looking for foreign coaches and expending stupendous amount of money to procure their services in the slavish belief that only their ‘superior’ coaching can yield us good results. The Yoruba people say what you are looking for in Sokoto [the city] is in your sokoto [trousers]. While the Super Eagles were floundering earlier in the series, getting beaten by an unstable and war-torn Sierra-Leone, the now triumphant team of Shuaibu Amodu, Stephen Keshi and Joe Erico was in our midst. The trio were languishing as mere assistants to Johannes Bonfrere, the ‘expert’ that was supposed to impart ‘technical skills’ to our team. Apart from the fact that our fixation on some foreign ‘expert’ makes us the laughing stock of the whole world, we do serious and incalculable damage to our national psyche and reputation by clinging to the belief that it is ONLY some expert from some where that can prepare our teams for world class competition. Any football enthusiast who had watched Nigerian national soccer teams during the 1994 and 1998 world cup series, including the phenomenal artistry that brought us the 96 Olympic gold, would come to the conclusion that while our teams, like all national teams in search of athletic laurels would benefit from international exposure, we evidently have in abundance in our country the talents that great coaches make. It was these coaches that gave us the boys in the first place. Why then do we get to international competition and start looking for foreign coaches? Do foreign coaches have a stake in our athletic success beyond their salaries and emoluments? The success of coach Amodu assisted by Keshi and Erico has taught us a lesson. Before they took over , the dismal performance of the team had brought about palpable feeling of anxiety. It was this unheralded ‘local’ team that reversed the fortunes of the Super Eagles; the scores were instructive, Liberia, 2-0, Sudan, 4-0 and Ghana, 3-0. Let us compare these results with the bewilderment and despair that gripped us all before Amodu et al took over. After the spectacular success at the 1996 Olympic games, Austin Okocha , the fleet-footed, mesmerizing wizard of our time, in an interview in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, characterized the team’s style as an attacking brand of soccer that other teams would have to contend with. Nigeria came back from behind to beat Brazil and Argentina. The encounter with Brazil was particularly memorable because twenty minutes to the end of the game, Nigeria was down one goal to three. The spectacular display reduced the Brazilian captain, Bebeto, to tears after the game. Now we seem to have forgotten that, Okocha, whose transfer fees now run into tens of millions of dollars, cut his professional teeth with the Rangers of Enugu. A competent, technically proficient coaching team that understands the socio-cultural terrain, has a psycho-social affinity for and with the team as well as personal stake in its fortune is much likely to succeed where a foreign import with abstract technical credentials fails. Amodu et al have demonstrated that in a society where many are thoroughly deluded with an almost psychotic cravings for ‘foreign expertise’ or worship whatever obtains in ‘advanced countries’, competence abounds everywhere.
|