By Obi Nwakanma

Last weekend, I drove from Orlando to Jacksonville, with my son, Kiran Amaechina, my cousin Chika, and his friend, Dozie Aguwa, to watch the Nigerian National team, the Eagles, play the US National Soccer team, in the final prep matches before the World Cup finals in Brazil. My son loves football – soccer they call it here – and plays as an attacking midfielder for a U-12  youth team, the “Spartans,” here in Orlando. So, I’m something of a “soccer dad.” I drive him around for his after-school practices and his many games and tournaments. And I love it.

From the first time he started kicking that stuff around in his YMCA five-year old soccer team in St. Louis, Missouri, he’d always said he would play for the Nigerian national team, the Eagles. He knows more about Jay-Jay Okocha than I do, and of course, Victor Moses and Enyeama, his two favorite Eagles now. I have tried to interest him a bit in Cricket; take him to the Pavillion not too far from my house, to watch cricketers, mostly from the Caribbean play. He’s not too taken. “It’s a weird game dad!” he once told me. He just loves the champagne-fluency and grit of soccer. He reels out names of soccer clubs and soccer stars, describes their games, predicts their future, analyzes the trends in ways that make me feel rather dated;  like an old hat; a dinosaur from the last century; and I often wonder where he picks all that stuff from because I have no TV in my house. But, it’s a new world, folks.

Information seeps through the walls of our gated lives. So, it was a treat for Kiran, that the US National soccer team – Team USA – and the National team – the Eagles – were billed to play the last friendly matches prior to the World Cup tournaments, in Jacksonville, Florida. Mira – my wife – bought the tickets, and last weekend, sent us on our way to what we were certain would be a feast for the senses. So, thence we went, to Jacksonville. It was a lovely day. The weather was the face of a warm-hearted god, beaming and untrammeled by angst. The traffic had built up by the time we arrived Jacksonville. A huge crowd had turned out to watch the game. The snail-crawl traffic just made it impossible, but we arrived the stadium fifteen minutes into the game. The score still stood at an even-zero.

It was a sea of blue-red-and white. Americans had turned out in very good number to cheer on the US national team. It was a raucous crowd; as idolatrous as any crowd can be. They cheered and booed each move. They kicked the air at every near-miss. They stood up to salute every deft move, and they raised the chants of support spontaneously, “I believe-that-we-will win! I believe-that-we-will win!!” But you could also see in that swell, a thrush of green and white; the bold and earthy colours of Nigeria, unwilling to be subsumed in all that backdrop of colours. It struck me all the more forcefully what it actually means, to wear the colours of a nation; to be the ambassador of your country in a competition. The right to join others on the world stage is fundamentally, and inexorably, an affirmation of one’s place and status in the human community.

UNITED STATES, JACKSONVILLE, FL – Forward Jozy Altidore #17 of the United States shoots and scores his second game of the game behind defender Joseph Yobo #2 of Nigeria during the international friendly match at EverBank Field on June 7, 2014 in Jacksonville, Florida. AFP

There was once when that right was denied Nigerians; when it was impossible for a Nigerian to fly the colours of this country in international competitions like the World Cup or the Commonwealth Games. It was a right earned by sovereignty, and it did not come easily. This is the fact what Nigerians must bear in mind, because what we now take for granted, that Nigeria could be represented; that the youth of this country could compete on the world stage with other free nations, was once an impossible dream. On April 1, 1932, Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote the Secretary of the Colonies for permission to represent Nigeria at the Summer Olympics that held in Los Angeles that summer of 1932. “In the last four years I have competed against America’s best in the Mile and 2-Mile races, and I feel that my country has a chance to make more than an outside showing. During my college I have participated in over thirty meets, and I have yet to fail to win a medal, or fall to place. In college I captained both the Cross-Country and the Track Athletic teams.

In the universities where I have studied (Howard, Lincoln, Columbia and Pennsylvania), I have always made the team, won my colours, and if not Champion. I have often been champion of the mile race…there is no reason why the West African colonies should not be represented in the Olympic Games.” The colonial authorities refused to grant him the permission. Zik’s letter today, however, remains in the British National archives. There is a place reserved in our human hearts for those who seek valour in our names. And we cheer them for the vicarious pleasure of being there in real time with them. Their triumphs become our triumphs, their losses, ours; and we feel the pain deep in the marrow at every loss. That was what many felt – a pain in the marrow – when the Eagles lost that friendly match in Jacksonville, on a 2-1 final score to the advantage of the US team. In the 31st minute of play, Jozzy Altidore converted a cross from Fabian Jonson, to put the US National team in the lead. A second-half run by Micheal Bradley, placed a through pass in the thirty-yard again for Altidore to make a deadly finish.

Nigerians looked unfazed. They continued to play their game. Emenike came in about twenty minutes to the end of the match, and his quick moves sharpened the edge of the Nigerian attack. It was Emenike’s flash-move; a quick run and dribble, perfectly executed, that placed the ball for Victor Moses to finish. Moses was tackled in the penalty box, and the result was a penalty which he very deftly converted. It was an unsatisfactory result for Nigerians. The boys played badly, many have said. Too slow to rally, others have said. Stephen Keshi is a fuckuper, you now hear, because he dropped some fine players and took Yobo instead in his final world cup team list. “What is he thinking? Yobo is finished!” He is liable to screw up things in defence when the crunch time comes . Well, that crunch time has come. The Eagles have landed in Brazil. Friday, the opening matches between Brazil and Croatia kicked off the 2014 FIFA World Cup.  But let me say this: the Eagles played a good game in Jacksonville. I think they played to plan. I think they did not play to win.

There was something very noticeable about the players: it was the deft footwork; a sharpness to their ball control. I think the defence needs work, and the attack  a bit more oomph! But in all, they’re still the Eagles: there is deadly calm to their game; a sort of un-rushed ease that deceives and wears out their opponents. I believe the Eagles can fly.

My twelve years old son put it even in sharper perspective after the friendly in Jacksonville: the Eagles did not lose, they gave Americans something to cheer about.  But tomorrow, as they file out for their first game of the real event, we are likely to see a different Eagles. They know what is at stake; that for the psyche of a country battered by corruption, Political chicanery, and Boko Haram, only victory can sweeten things; they know that this is the only time we wear our Nigerian hearts on the sleeves.  I believe they will win. Go Eagles.