NIGERIA: THIS FOREIGN COACH THING

NIGERIA: THIS FOREIGN COACH THING

There is a stage you get to in life and you refuse to be deceived any longer. The world knows us and we know the world. However much we try to hide our shame we will never succeed. Our sins are as red as crimson; they will not become as white as snow because a country that seeks peace without justice is as hypocritical as a country can be. It is folly and an exercise in futility. Why will we continue to mouth vision 2020 when everything and every one who knows their onions have indicated that the vision is unattainable? What makes it more sickening is that those telling us it is achievable know it is not and are doing nothing to speed up the process of development. If there are some who still lend their ears and time to the shenanigans and deceit of these people then I am not one of them. No one will ever sell me a dummy in this country again. Does it take forever to build or repair refineries? Why on earth will any serious country be unable to add a single megawatt to its electricity needs in ten years? Yet the country has the economic pretensions of being one of the biggest 20 by 2020.

We wanted the Super Eagles of Nigeria to perform wonders at the just concluded nation’s cup in Angola. They did not and they are being vilified front, back, left, right and centre and their unfortunate coach, Amodu Shuaibu has been sacked or did they say redeployed? Nonsense. These boys do not owe us anything. A Country that has a non performing President or is even without one? A country with unaccountable Ministers? A country where Governors do nothing other than to fiddle and twiddle? A country where Lawmakers pass no bill? A country where the Attorney General is the Chief lawbreaker? A country that Citizens do nothing to make? What is anyone’s justification in condemning the boys? What has anyone of these critics done to make Nigeria? How have these critics made their own personal lives a success and a model for others to copy? Spare us this nonsense and let us get on with the job of making Nigeria.

To start with the coach thing, I think one of the chief culprits destroying Nigerian football are these clueless nitwits who call themselves football analysts on television, radio and sometimes the print media. The same analyst who told you yesterday that you do not need a foreign coach will shamelessly eat his words and vociferously call for one today. Statistics they say do not lie but in football you can use correct statistics to make anything look good or bad. For example, until his recent injury set back, only Thierry Henry (before he left for Barcelona) scored more premier league goals than Yakubu Aiyegbeni. And that in a league with the likes of Wayne Rooney, Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres to mention a few truly class acts of the European game. Now juxtapose this with the perennial pedestrian in Nigerian colours and tell me what that tells you.

No one will argue that Thijs Libregts is a bad coach. We all know what he did with the Dutch national team. Berti Vogts, a coach that took Germany to the European Championship runner up spot in 1992 and the title in 1996 is by no stretch of imagination a bad coach. Brazilian Alberto Torres turned his back on us when we thought we had a done deal. The ‘white witch doctor’ Phillippe Troussier was not a bad coach either. He proved it at Korea/Japan 2002 with the Japanese national team. In the same vein, I dare say that the much vilified Amodu Shuaibu is not a bad coach. Festus Adegboye Onigbinde was one of the most technically astute coaches in his time. Former Green Eagles captain Christian Chukwu was not bad either. Stephen Okechukwu Keshi proved that indigenous coaches can go the whole hog. He did it with Togo and is doing it with Mali. Ex international, Samson Siasia is about the best Youth coach in the world. He did it at the Under 23 World Youth Championship in the Netherlands and at the last Olympics in Beijing, China, though he lost both final matches to Argentina.

Thijs Libregts did not suddenly become a bad coach as soon as he put pen to paper with the NFF. Berti Vogts cannot become bad as soon as he berthed on our shores. Far from it. Perhaps as Peter Drucker wrote in Corporate Governance when institutions continue to fail perhaps it is time to focus on the institutions themselves and not the men who run these institutions. What is in the Nigerian make up and constitution that suddenly turns eagles into chickens? Why do proven world beaters fail here? Bora Milutinovic is a classic example at the 1998 World cup with Nigeria. After credible spells as coach of Mexico, a team he took to the Quarter finals of the 1986 World cup in Mexico, lowly Costa Rica which he took over Four months before Italia ’90 and miraculously led them to the second round, the United States where he led the modest hosts to a narrow loss in the second round of the 1994 World cup to eventual Champions – Brazil, he led Nigeria to the Mundial in France after the unjust removal of the ‘white witch doctor’, denying him the right to lead the team to the World cup finals in his native France. After two unconvincing wins against Spain and Bulgaria, the team fell apart as they were pummeled three goals to one by Paraguay and got a hiding with Denmark drubbing the team four goals to one in a match the Eagles were widely expected to win. The team left France in tatters and Bora Milutinovic never returned to our shores.

In Nigeria, I dare suggest we modify Peter Drucker’s thesis. We do have weak institutions and focus must truly be directed at these institutions but we must also question the sanity of the men who run these institutions in this country. Or did not our FA Chairman sign a contract that allowed Berti Vogts to live in Germany and yet coach Nigeria? We hear though unconfirmed that Glenn Hoddle wanted less than half of the Kings ransom Lars Lagerback will earn in five months and yet he did not get the job. These people are clowns. How much did the FA pay Amodu for this same job? Where on earth does a coach earn N 50, 000,000.00 (Fifty Million Naira) per month? Only in Nigeria you will say. And if this is also true, what manner of FA will employ a coach because he seems familiar with the names of the national team players? How dumb can the men who run our institutions be? Should not these people realise that all the Swede needs do to get the information with which he dazzled the FA was to look up the internet even for a minute? I am so ashamed of my country men. Though not that I support looking up to the Nile to solve our football problems, it is even an insult that in the 21st Century, Nigeria will look to the land of the Pharaohs for a coach for our National team, but if part of the reason Hassan Shehata was not considered good enough for the Eagles was that he failed to qualify for the World cup with Egypt then what makes Lagerback’s failure to do same with his native Sweden more tolerable? Why did the NFF prevaricated so much in sacking Amodu if he was going to get the boot anyway? The immense opportunity the Nations cup in Angola would have afforded the new man at the helm to prepare for South Africa 2010 was therefore lost. Why does the NFF pay about the most attractive match bonuses across the globe at competitions and yet get nothing done? The players remain unmotivated usually. Why does Nigeria lose semi final matches only to win the third place match? Why has Nigeria lost so many competition finals – 1984, 1988, 1990, and 2000 to use the Nations cup as a parameter?

We still delude ourselves in football in the same manner we delude ourselves as ‘giant of Africa’ in the world committee. After Egypt with six wins now, the most successful sides in nations cup history are Ghana and Cameroun with four wins apiece. Nigeria has only won the competition on two occasions on home soil in 1980 and in Tunis in 1994. Cameroun defeated Nigeria in the 1984, 1988 and 2000 finals to win her first three titles. The 1988 and 2000 finals were particularly painful and leave a sour taste in the mouth. Nigeria had no business losing those two finals if our football administrators were any astute in the discharge of their duties. So in what stupid sense do we still consider ourselves a powerhouse in African football? Even the politics of the game in Africa passes us by. How many times has Nigeria pulled her weight at CAF? Does what we feel or think cut ice with Issa Hayatou? It took close to four decades for Enyimba FC of Aba to finally earn us a little respect in Club football when the team won the African Champions League in 2003 and repeated the feat a year later. Two wins till date. Contrast this with the many wins of two Egyptian clubs – Zamalek and Al Ahly. Even Orlando Pirates since won it for South Africa which was a pariah in world football until the 1990’s before we mustered our first win. When last was a Nigerian footballer in CAF’s top three yet a Nigerian company gleefully bankrolls the Multi million dollar awards every year. Oh how the rest of the football community must be having a jolly laughter at our expense!!!

To get back to the foreign coach thing, without questioning the desirability or otherwise of a Foreign coach for the Super Eagles, it is worthy of note however that Foreign coaches have not proven any more successful than their indigenous counterparts across the continent. Save for the 1996 Olympic Gold medal in football which we won with the Dutch understudy of Clemence Westerhof, Johannes Bonfrere, all other age grade competition medals have been won with indigenous coaches. Our female national team, the best in Africa has never been tutored by a foreign coach. The Brazilian, Otto Gloria won the nations cup for us in 1980, the ‘Dutchgerian’, Clemence Westerhof with no pedigree whatsoever when he arrived our shores in 1989 led Nigeria to glory in 1994 and to our first ever world cup but no one will deny that in 1980 things were not this bad and that you could not question the commitment of the Christian Chukwu skippered Green Eagles. But then that was before big money and European football destroyed the African game. Neither will anyone deny that the 1994 team can and has been described as the Golden team of Nigerian football and the coach then had the ears and eyes of those that mattered at Aso rock. And does anyone remember how Westerhof treated us the morning after? Abandoning Nigeria and the team in the United States after the painful loss to Italy, he elected to fly home straight to his native Netherlands even though we gave him a platform on which to build his career and pedigree.

No indigenous coach has won the nations cup with Nigeria but they have nonetheless had successful stints with the National team. Adegboye Onigbinde lost the final of the Nations cup in 1984 to a massively experienced Camerounean team led by such great players as Theophile Abega, Roger Milla, Thomas Nkono and Joseph Antoine-Bell. In the year 2002, when Amodu Shuaibu was first unjustly removed after qualifying us for the World cup and with little time to prepare, Adegboye Onigbinde again did creditably well with the team playing some good football on the way to losing narrowly to Argentina and Sweden. The team drew their last match against England. Infact I still consider that team unlucky not to qualify from the tough group and that speaks volume of the character the coach and his wards exhibited at that world cup especially considering that the Argies did not eventually qualify from that group too. Along the line, he defeated an Ireland team tutored at the time by Berti Vogts two goals to one in an international friendly preparatory to the World cup.

The much vilified Amodu Shuaibu did something great with BCC Lions of Gboko in the 1990’s winning both domestic and continental honours before joining the National team set up. In 2002 in Mali, he narrowly lost the semi finals to a Senegalese team that went all the way to the final of that year’s competition and further still to achieve fame at that year’s World cup by defeating defending Champions France and eventually reaching the Quarterfinals with Frenchman, Bruno Metsu. They had two years earlier almost eliminated Nigeria in Lagos in the Quarter final of the 2000 Nations cup until Julius Aghahowa came to the rescue. That team was tutored by Johannes Bonfrere. The same Amodu led and qualified Nigeria for the 2002 world cup but was unjustly shown the exit door after Mali, 2002 because some influential group of people in the FA did not like his face and style. The German, Berti Vogts, with a wonderful contract that will make Amodu green with envy played boring football all his days at the helm of affairs, he did not take Nigeria to any world cup and presided over a woeful nations cup performance at Ghana 2008, Nigeria’s worst outing in 26 years and he was reluctantly sacked by the FA. Now history has come full circle, Amodu has again been sacked unjustly. That is the thanks he gets for leading Nigeria to the 2010 world cup ticket against all odds. And all because he had a rough patch to the Quarter final of Angola 2010 and came unstuck against a youthful Ghanaian side just when his team was starting to play some decent football and the improvement could only have peaked from then on. And I also remember that on November 16, 1994, this man led the Super Eagles against England at Wembly Stadium where the Eagles played what for me remains their best match ever although they still were beaten by a David Platt headed goal. But hell, if you are the NFF, you do not consider these variables.

Christian Chukwu led the Super Eagles to a Bronze medal at the 2004 edition of the Nations cup losing the semi final to the hosts and eventual winners, Tunisia on penalties after extra time. Another Ex international Augustine Eguavoen again led us to the bronze medal two years later in 2006 after a narrow semi final loss to a questionable Didier Drogba lone goal and only failed to qualify for the 2006 World cup by the narrowest of margins having tied with Angola on points only for Angola to nick it on the head to head rule. It is easy to delude ourselves that Nigeria should be winning the nations cup for fun but anyone who has followed the game for a considerable length of time will tell you why these things are not necessarily as they seem. I know cynics may say as the Legendary Bob Paisley, the man who built Liverpool, England’s most successful club into the force they became in the modern game that ‘first place is everything and second place is nothing’, but it still cannot be emphatically said that foreign coaches have necessarily fared better than the indigenous ones simply because no indigenous coach has led Nigeria to first place and the coveted diadem at the Nations cup, Africa’s premier showpiece competition.

Again, I say enough of these trumped up technical astuteness of the foreign coaches. At the Nations cup final in 1994, Zambia drew first blood before Nigeria replied with a brace from Emmanuel Amunike and as the second half wore on, the Copper bullets as the team later became known led by the mercurial Kalusha Bwalya played like a team demon possessed. They threatened to overrun the Super Eagles at some point and towards the end of proceedings a fierce strike from Kalusha Bwalya cannoned off the Crossbar with the Goalkeeper well beaten. Imagine if that had gone in. All the good work by Westerhof at that competition could easily have been undone at that point. At the final whistle the relief etched on the faces of the players, the technical crew and the fans watching on television back home was obvious and there for all to see.

At the 1994 world cup in the United States, Nigeria came within two minutes of achieving the nearly impossible with the same Westerhof when the Super Eagles traded tackles with Italy in the second round. Nigeria took a first half lead ironically by another Emmanuel Amunike strike from a corner kick and defended that up until the 88th minute of that eventful encounter but just when the team should have bedded down and see out the last two minutes of the match, one of the players carelessly lost the ball in Midfield, the ball made its way upfield and found the incomparable Roberto Baggio who coolly slotted past the despairing arms of Peter Rufai. A questionable penalty in extra time when Austine Eguavoen needlessly clattered into Antonio Benarrivo was again converted by Roberto Baggio to send the Eagles out of a tournament which final they could well have reached. This was a match wherein the Eagles outplayed, outmaneuvered, outfought and outthought the feared Azzuri. A match where the legend of Austine (Jay Jay) Okocha was born. A match in which Gianfranco Zola was sent off in the 75th minute to hand the Eagles a massive advantage. Yet the Eagles lost the match. In the course of that match Westerhof took off Daniel Amokachie and brought on Mutiu Adepoju in the 35th minute and he replaced Emmanuel Amunike with Thompson Oliha in the 57th minute when we already had Sunday Oliseh and Jay Jay Okocha in midfield and just when we needed to hit the Italians on the break as they were pressing for an equalizer with a man down. Westerhof had Victor Ikpeba, Samson Siasia and Efan Ekoku on the bench. Any two of the lot would have been genius as we will keep our attacking impetus and there was no way Italy was going to come back into it. But as they say all that is history now and a moot point but I shudder to think of the unprintable things we would have heard if an indigenous coach was at the helm of affairs. So much for the technical superiority of the foreign coaches then.

In 1998, Bora Milutinovic was brought in a few months to the start of the World cup and for all we were told about his competence, only a sublime strike from Sunday Oliseh separated us and Spain in the first match. We squeezed past Bulgaria in the second but that was the end of the tournament for Nigeria. We were comprehensively beaten by Paraguay in the last group match but then we had done enough to qualify for the second round. At a time any coach that was half as good as Bora was touted to be would have warned his players to stay focused on the match against Denmark; his wards were already dreaming Brazil. All that is history now too as we well know what happened. A disastrous match for the Eagles. Four goals to one it ended in favour of the Danes. Bora left us and the world has since moved on. Something tells me and I have the nagging fear that the story of Lars Lagerback and the 2010 world cup may not be any different from that of Bora Milutinovic and the 1998 world cup.

Finally these mercenary tacticians, because that is what they really are, have nothing to lose. They come here, get a great contract, they are not monitored and whether they do well or not their perquisites of office are guaranteed (I hear they now lodge a copy of their executed contracts with the world football governing body, FIFA) and there is no sanction mechanism should they fail. In short they have the best of both worlds and when the misadventure ends we are usually left to lick our wounds until the vicious cycle repeats itself again. But what I know is this, as long as we will not run our country properly so long will we continue to suffer in the hands of those who know not how to run football.


STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA is a Partner at the Lagos Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.