Be e-relevant or irrelevant
– Common saying in Singapore

By IKEDDY ISIGUZO,  Chairman Editorial Board
You would require a lot of e-imagination to see any future for the Eagles in 2014 after the debacle in South Africa. In line with the times, I think it is even better if we are talking about e-imagination. We are going to roam through the future with a digital mind, e-imagination!

The Eagles in 2014 must be a team that has bridged the digital divide, the summary of the accepted standard for global participation in all issues. Where is our team on the digital scale? Do we have the e-Eagles? Are we thinking of the e-Eagles?

Super Eagles of Nigeria

Nigeria Today
Nigeria accounts for approximately one-sixth of Africa’s people. In 2008, 46 per cent of Nigerians lived in an urban environment. In 2008, 66 per cent of Nigeria’s urban population lived in slums with little access to basic amenities. Nigeria has some of the worst poverty and health statistics in Africa with 92 per cent of the population living on less than US$2 per day.

Nigeria has one of the highest infant mortality rates (100 deaths per 1,000 live births).
Approximately 42 per cent of the country’s population is under the age of 15, and another 55 per cent is between the ages of 15 to 491. In 2009 Nigeria’s population grew to 153 million. Nigeria, with its oil money, has some of the worst health indicators in the world, with its health system performance ranking of 187 among 191 member states of the United Nations.

Nigeria’s Global Status
FIFA U-16/17 World Cup Winner (1985, 1993, 2007), Runner-Up (1987, 2001, 2009)
FIFA U-20 World Cup Runner Up (1989, 2005), Third (1985)
Olympic Football Winner (1996), Runner –Up (2008)
FIFA World Cup 2nd Round (1994, 1998), 1st Round (2002), 2nd Round (2010)
FIFA Confederations Cup Fourth (1995)
I deliberately restricted this to men’s FIFA competitions since the World Cup holds our interest at the moment.

The World In 2014
The projected population of the world in 2014 is 7.1 billion. Today there are 6.8 billion people, a number which many of us would top with 75 million people before the end of the year. About 170 million of the world in 2014 would be Nigerians. Less than 1 million of those Nigerians would be professional footballers in any sense of the word.

2014 Fixtures
Seven games are already fixed for 2014, none of these involves Nigeria. Only one of them is before the 2014 World Cup, six of them are after the June/July fiesta in Brazil. The fixtures for other years between now and 2014 follow – 2013 has 12 games across eight months with January, May, July, December the only empty months.

2012 there are only seven games with January, March, June, July, December not free.
2011 with only December free will be a busy year. Three major continental competitions – Copa America, CONCACAF Gold Cup and AFC Asian Cup – are in the fixtures. Entries for the 2012 Olympics closed on 12 March 2010 and depending on the number of entries (expected to be high since they are free) most continents would be busy into early 2012 with the London Olympic qualifiers.

The face of these fixtures would change once FIFA rectifies the 2010-2016 calendar, with a Confederation like CAF deciding when to commence its proposed odd-year Nations Cup (which may entail that the qualifiers would again be different from those of the FIFA World Cup).

On paper these are statistics – dates, fixtures, at best a calendar – but they have vast implications for our e-Eagles preparations for the 2014 World Cup. As waste time debating our incompetence and fraudulent administration of the game, for most countries, 2014 is already the past.

Special Things About 2014
•It would be 20 years since we stood at the verge of making history through the spell-bounding performance at the 1994 World Cup in the USA. Minutes separated us from beating Italy and reaching the quarter-finals in our first ever World Cup, but we froze. It would remain our best World Cup for years more. Three subsequent World Cups (1998, 2002 and 2010) witnessed miserable performances.

•It would be 20 years since we won our last(?) Nations Cup in spectacular style in Tunisia. Since then, we have played in one final and four semi-finals, losing all. No African country has a worse record of losing at the peak.

•2014 marks 100 years of Nigeria. On 1 January 1914, the Northern and Southern Protectorates were merged to form Nigeria.
•In 2014, the World Cup is hosted again in Brazil, after 64 years. Brazil is the most successful of the eight World Cup champions with five victories in the final. Behind it are Italy (four), Germany (three), Uruguay (two), France (two), Argentina (two), England (one), and Spain (one). Remarkably, Brazil has never won the World Cup at home, the closest was the lost final to Uruguay at the Maracana Stadium in 1950.

The World Cup in Brazil would be a spectacular that only the best prepared teams would have the nerves to scale the distractions and entertainment Brazil would load into the programme.It is therefore a landmark year by several indices.

Challenges To 2014
Unimaginative NFA Board
The quality of the NFA Board is unacceptably poor. The main challenge to the ambitions of the Eagles in 2014 and beyond is the calibre of men and women who run the affairs of our football. Unfortunately, with eyes on the pies that FIFA and government have laid out for football, many see football administration as a meal ticket or a platform for access to power. Both aspirations are wrong though they are the major ingredients that populate the thinking of those in charge of football. They will hurt 2014.

Abhorrence of planning, we live in the past
We have refused to join the e-age, the era of taking advantages in technology to make remarkable advancement. The selfishness of our administrators is exhibited in wasteful trip to places that could otherwise be efficiently and effectively covered using technology.

Planning is alien to us, all we talk about is money, usually no money. Where the money is available, we mismanage it. An organisation that does not plan dies. We should learn that quickly. Bad plans are better than no plans, at least bad plans still give you a chance to think, something we seem to hate.
We Are Classless
Nigerian football is in  class of its own. We adhere to minimal standards and glorify them. Who do we benchmark our activities against? Why is it so difficult to do routine things like organising games?

Why can’t we maintain standards for playing turfs? Why is it so difficult to procure players transfer certificates? Why do we have computers that do not work? Why is the NFA unable to realise that its Committees are the nurseries for ideas? Where else do FA Chairmen do nothing yet the NFA Board courts them because of their votes?

Poor quality of the home league
The over-dependence on foreign-based players will impede 2014. The poor quality of the domestic league ensures that Nigeria’s addition to the global stock of quality players is decreasing. How many Nigerians are featuring regularly in top teams abroad? Without a home league to give them competition, the players abroad, not minding how bad they are, have guaranteed places in the Eagles. Over time, Nigeria may have to depend on foreigners, who no one else wants, changing nationality to play for the Eagles.

An unrealistic assessment of the importance of Nigerian football
I must be one of the few who do not see the greatness that we preach about Nigerian football. We are barely an acceptable force in African football. Our best ratings globally are in junior competitions where our tattered imagine should be a bigger source of concern.

A sober reflection and acceptance of our place in the global game may be helpful in making us see the work that lies ahead. Many of us are too pompous when they talk about the achievements of football.

The only plausible explanation is that this grandiose picture of Nigerian football could be a marketing gimmick to prise billions of Naira from the coffers of governments, which in their wisdom shun small-budget projects.

Our football is so big that we have not won the CAF Nations Cup since 1994?
Deceit of age group competitions
The less said about this, the better. Diego Amanda Maradona, the Argentine was the star player of the inaugural FIFA U-20 Championship in Tunisia in 1977. Nine years after, he won the World Cup in Mexico for Argentina. Thirteen years on, he led Argentina to lose the final to Germany in Italy. At USA’94, 17 years on, he still played and barring his drugs challenges, he might have lasted a little longer.

Where are our players from the age group competitions? Will any junior player from 1997 make the 2014 World Cup? What is going on is evil and killing our football.

It cannot make us successful at the highest level.
Why Do We Need To Do Well In 2014?
Those who are speculating that the Eagles would do wonders at the 2014 World Cup should be admired for their optimism (patriotism?). One issue they have to resolve is why the Eagles have to do well in 2014.

Let us assume for a fleeting moment that the Eagles win the 2014 World Cup, what would that mean to Nigeria? How would a World Cup victory improve Nigerian life and Nigerian football? What impact did victories, including the 1996 Olympics, have on our football?
Without a concrete reason for winning the World Cup, a victory, or even an impressive performance would remain a pipe dream.

Poverty Mentality
The stark statistics about the cruelty of Nigerian life are realities that affect our players and the administrators as well. When players grow up in poverty their mentality is built on survival. Once they scale that point, motivating them with anything becomes almost impossible.

My study of this situation is that MOTIVATION is challenging. We understand – and misunderstand it – differently. No issue in sports today exhibits the gap between the authorities and our footballers than motivation.

The authorities think it is about money. For today’s footballers, it is something more than money. They may not find a name for it. I still guess it is up to the authorities to figure it out. Psychologists would write pages of motivational theories, but the most profound remains Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”6. It applies to us.

Maslow, an American who studied law before psychology, died in 1970. He listed the hierarchies as – physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, self-actualisation.  All these have universal applications to human beings and have been used extensively in marketing goods, services, as well as ideas.

Over the years, controversies have arisen over whether these needs have any hierarchies at all. For our football, we have stuck to the physiological needs of our players.

In more than 20 years, our football prospered on the wings of the poor economic policies that wiped away millions of great business ideas and made foreign currencies king over an under producing domestic economy. In a depressing setting, where hunger pangs remind people about the need to survive, the first needs are food, shelter, clothing, maybe security. People are motivated by anything that could help them out of these needs. Football was handy. It placed food on the table and did a lot more. It lifted people practically out of poverty. When people escape this level of needs, they have to be motivated in other ways.

How else have we motivated our players? Are there other ways to unlock the potentials of our players? Their potentials are locked in a psychological battle, and battles are won in the mind.

We are stuck with motivating our players at the first level of needs, which many of them left there more than 10 years ago. Once our players have escaped the basic needs, what can we give them? Why are we stuck on the basic needs while they have left it?
Our footballers play to escape poverty not to win the World Cup.

Some Advice
The NFA Board
Elect a Board of the NFA that understands football as a global brand with national passions. The Board, everyone in it, but especially the President, must realise the importance of Nigeria and its conduct in the global village.

The quality of the present Board of the NFA is appalling and speaks volumes about the extent to which Nigerians have ignored the game. Our football cannot grow beyond the (non)thinking that currently drives it. More frightening is that fact that most of those who want to replace this Board are not better. Their attitude is like that of the Kikuyus over the Kalenjins in the epic book on the fight against corruption in Kenya, It’s Our Turn To Eat7.

A Board bereft of ideas would only think that money is its problem (not challenge). The biggest challenge for Nigerian football in its entirety is the quality of people running it. The greatest resource those who are serious crave for is IDEAS.

Make Eagles Competitive
The era of constricting entry into the Eagles should be closed. There are no junior players in Nigeria, the way others use this term. Anyone who meets the standards for being in the Eagles should be admitted through well laid out criteria. There should be more emphasis on ability rather than where one plays.

Set Realistic Targets
Laughable targets like making the semi-final of the World Cup “or nothing” diminish us. When last did a country that cannot win a continental trophy get so close to the World Cup? The way we talk about the World Cup is the easiest way of noting how unserious we are. A country struggles to qualify for the World Cup, it cannot get its players to meetings, it cannot arrange decent accommodation for the team, it cannot secure money placed in its care, it operates without standards and it wants a World Cup semi-final ticket in that manner. The target was simply unrealistic.

Everyday Is The Future
Our decisions and indecisions today shape the future we often refer to as if it is eternity. What are we doing about the 2012 Olympics? How ready are we for the next CAF Nations Cup? Is it important to find the linkages among these competitions? Can the Eagles play more friendly games? There must be a way of linking the preparations of the Eagles to the 2014 World Cup.

Don’t Distract The Future
It is time we made a major decision about age group competitions. My simple approach to them is that if we cannot keep to the age standards, we should stop attending these competitions. They are a major distraction to our future.

My suggestion in this direction is unacceptable because it cuts out major opportunities for trips, estacodes, and career advancement for many. Moreover, it would cost those of us who believe in littleness their chance to remain relevant in a country where many are more interested in making the news headlines than in what they do, if anything.

We must then get rid of the pervading corruption and disgrace of age group competitions by punishing violations stiffly. Age group competitions have ruined our future and keep distracting the undiscerning into believing in the future of Nigerian football. FIFA cannot rescue that future for us any longer.

Think Of 2018 Too
The most painful aspect of the 2010 World Cup is that it was a total loss to Nigeria. No player from the 2010 World Cup is likely to be available by 2014, unless we want to continue with the practice that has seen us using players who are well past their prime.
We have ploughed millions of Dollars in employing a coach, training players and then we planned to terminate their services with the World Cup because we were thinking about the past.

A more thoughtful selection of the team would have meant that we would have had some players after 2010, who can carry on with the benefit of the experience of the World Cup in South Africa.
Conclusion

The present – more so the future – is immersed in technology, the digital age, the super information highway of ideas and more ideas. Those who miss it have no future, no matter their pretences.

While we ponder about the Eagles in 2014, they must be the e-Eagles, a team that is comfortable in the confines of the digital age, a team whose tenders (include the NFA Board) is in touch with the future, a thinking team, a team that e-Nigerians would recognise as a team, a team that is a team, not a collection of players.

Such an e-team knows that success has various notches and would aspire for success. The preparation of the e-Eagles would be knowledge-based, with no room at all for speculations.

I welcome you to the e-Eagles, the relevant Eagles, the e-Eagles of our future, e-Eagles of 2014. I want you to e-imagine the e-Eagles because with e-imagination, the e-Eagles would be possible. Just e-imagine the e-Eagles – we can start now, in case we have not started.