Nigeria/Argentina match, a comic movie
By Prof. Emmanuel Ojeme
In spite of all the well heeled arguments and wise counsel against the football game between Nigeria and Argentina in this formative period of the Super Eagles, the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF and the high profile brokers have remained adamant and it is set to go on stage.
I wish the NFF well. This premature game at this time has shown the way this NFF is working and the quality of its strategic planning for football development in Nigeria. For me, this game is make belief and no less than a comic movie.
It is not that Nigeria cannot play a friendly match against Argentina. Why not, we can do so. But that is after we have put our team in order. We seem to have forgotten so soon how tattered this team has been in the last ten years and how the national football team of our great nation suddenly became a non-performer in competitions.
About five months ago, a rebuilding process started and we have not even sealed it up and Siasia is lining up against Argentina. What do we hope to achieve? Nothing at all. Our low flying Super Eagles is rated about 39/40 in the World, while Argentina that can raise about 10 national teams of higher quality than ours ranks with the likes of Brazil.
These are teams we needed to engage as we are less then six months to the next World Cup. Engaging Argentina now tells me that the NFF Technical Committee is very weak and need to work very hard to convince sports scientists and epistemologists that they can deliver quality results.
Secondly, the NFF used to have a Strategic Planning Committee and one wonders with this emerging unstrategic development whether the Committee is still alive.
Considering the low level of performance, the Super Eagles descended to, in recent times, engaging in comic movie games like this current one will not help its development.
It is like learning how to solve algebraic equations with quadratic equation. Building a team is scientific and sequential. This arrangement is out of sequence of motor skill and team development.
We are playing to the gallery. Our failure to lift the WAFU Cup in a tournament organized in our backyard with Siasia in charge, should tell us where we are on the scale of football in Africa and the task we face in building a team that can conquer.
Our failure to qualify the Falcons for the All African Games should tell the NFF to get serious with the job assigned to it.
In all of these, I am afraid for the NFF and Nigerian football. I am sorry to say that the assumption of the operational paradigm of the NFF is very defective.
Simply put, as I see it, the NFF is consumed by the assumption that once former footballers occupy all the rooms in the Glass House, Nigerian football will be in heaven.
This is not exactly correct. They are good people quite alright and patriotic Nigerians. But in addition to playing for Nigeria and playing professional football, they need reprocessing to enable these patriotic people occupy leadership and managerial positions.
They bring a lot of 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 mentality to the Glass House and what else? Nothing. The Nigerian Football Federation, while stuffing its house with retired footballers, must also be looking for men and women of cognate scientific knowledge of sports including football; people who have great intellectual quality to raise the level of debate on issues in the Glass House, before decisions are made.
Football development requires this quality of men and women to raise the standard of football beyond comic movies that we are about to start seeing.
I hope the NFF knows very well that it needs a football development blueprint. I mean, a football policy document that captures the aspirations of Nigeria’s Vision 20:2020 policy prescriptions. It must study this document and others to build the national football teams that Nigeria deserves.
