Don't cry Lulu, your best is not good enough

One wag once stated that its either we kill corruption or corruption will kill us, adding that there is no way both can live together. It’s obvious who is winning.

Our present failure in football tournaments are coming a bit late. However, they are the product of corruption of the system and pitiable organisation.

We are on the cusp of not making it to South Africa 2010 (if you are not an illusionist, it is clear we have bungled our World Cup chances); the Flying Eagles have messed themselves at the U-21 tournament in Egypt; and we will fail to make it in the U-17 tournament which Nigeria is hosting this month.

Nigerians had dismissed the Flying Eagles after their poor performance in the qualifiers. But being eternal optimists, they gave them a second chance following the appointment of Samson Siasia as their coach. How come the redeemer failed to make the mark? So who falls on his sword?

The President of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Sani Lulu Abdulahi, disavows blame and pointedly labels Siasia a failure.

Said he: “I don’t give out a job like that whether it is a one day job, you must give me assurance that you are going to deliver and that was what Siasia did when he took the appointment.

The NFF has given the team and the coaches [the] enabling environment to perform, so, for people to now start blaming the association is not fair, but all these are the work of the press and some detractors.

I have done my best for this country and I am happy with what I have done so far and that is why I weep every day because the results refuse to come.” But Lulu’s best is not good enough. Nigeria has not had such woeful results as have happened on Lulu’s watch.

Siasia and the players

But the blame game goes on. Siasia parries the blame to the players. He panned them for their lack of organisation. “It’s hard. We scored twice for the first time in the tournament but it still wasn’t enough. At the end we were a man up but we were still having problems.

When you lead twice, you need to preserve that lead, and we didn’t do that. My team were too disorganised to keep their shape,” Siasia said.

But Siasia is not blameless. What was responsible for the inclusion of some players, like Sunday Abe, Edet Ibok and Obiora Nwankwo, who were not up to speed? What is Siasia’s relationship with Peter Ejiasi, a Spain-based football agent?

Some Nigerian-based football agents have accused Siasia of using players of a foreign-based agent, and discarding their players who are better. Siasia’s response to that allegation does not balm concerns, contending that the players have clubs and existing contracts.

Of course, the coach knows that only players who play have the chance of being snapped by clubs of big European clubs.

We would not run short of excuses but let us not forget that German/Italian clubs refused to release no fewer than 10 players who were invited to join the German team; same with English clubs.

Excuses have been made about how two defenders who would have bolstered our defence failed to get Spanish visas to attend the training camp. May we ask: does the NFF have a protocol department? If they have one, the department must be derelict.

Or is it that the leadership always makes them the fall guys? It is only in Nigeria that ‘administrative lapses’ are blamed after discrepancies were discovered in the age declarations of Samson Siasia, Dahiru Sadi and Andrew Uwe as happened when FIFA, in 1989, slammed a two-year ban on Nigeria from the World Youth Championship.

Siasia believe

Due to his success in the past, it is alarming and it marks a serious flaw in judgement for Siasia to believe that those boys can win the U-20 tournament in Egypt.

Those guys are the most naive bunch I have ever seen in green-white jersey. And Siasia was also guilty of tactical naivety. It has become contagious: Tunisia’s Darragi equalised at the 90th minute in the match with the Super Eagles and Bjorn Kopplin scored the winner in the 93rd minute in our match with Germany.

One would never tire of writing about the over-aged players Nigeria takes to football tournaments. There is no Nigerian player in that U-20 tournament to Egypt that is below 22 years, yet we failed to make the mark. I thought they were playing their testimonials.

Most of them may have come to the end of their playing careers.

Nigerian football authorities miss the point on the essence of youth tournaments: they are avenues for up-coming players to learn the ropes and hone their skills. It is not an avenue for paying retirement benefits to footballers.

We should learn from other climes. Take Theo Walcott as an example. At the age of 17, he was playing for England’s U-21 team. He has not played at lower levels. Were he a Nigerian, he would have been invited to play at all levels of youth tourney because of our desperation to win.

Way forward

How do we address our declining fortune? If we are to address the lack of grassroots talent, there is an area we have failed to see as a cause. As public schools are dying, only housemaids and children of the poorest of the poor now attend them. And it is only public schools that have space for sporting activities.

In the past 10 years, private schools have taken the entire space. As we rush to embrace private schools, it is lost on us that they do not have enough space for children even to walk into their classes.

Development of non-academic skills is killed right from primary one. As is well known, most sports are developed from primary school. Let us point out to our sport cheats that players for U-17 should be either be in SSS 3 or have just left secondary school.

May we ask: how many of our U-17 players that passed the MRI scan are in school or left secondary school a year or two ago?

Private schools have become status symbols, and they even extort money for sports from the students when they know they have no sporting grounds.

Previously, the children of the average family were those who engaged in sports. But today’s experience is that even the middle class and the poor are forcing their wards to ‘poor private schools’.

Part of the solution is to ask city and town administrators to create sporting grounds where schools can take turns to utilise the sporting facilities.