Without a doubt, Nigerian football may not be at its lowest ebb presently but things are certainly looking gloomy for the country’s number-one sport. And anytime our football is in a free-fall mode, those who know that Nigeria is blessed with abundant talents find it hard to figure out what exactly the problem is with our football. At the moment, we are at another crossroads because nobody seems to understand why we are speedily becoming a laughing stock among our contemporaries in the round leader game.
In the past two weeks, both the Olympic Eagles (Nigeria’s national U-23 male national team) and their elder brothers, the Super Eagles piled misery on Nigerian football lovers. After lacklustre performances against Guinea both at home and away, the Olympic Eagles failed to qualify for the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco where they would have picked the ticket to the next Olympics in Paris. The pain of this failure is deep because Nigeria had failed to qualify for the last Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. This means despite the enormous talents at Nigeria’s disposal, she has failed to reach the Olympics two times consecutively. Most Nigerians are still trying to come to terms with this painful reality.
And then came the disgraceful showing by the Super Eagles which put their AFCON 2023 qualification in jeopardy before that face-saving 1-0 win that they managed to record against the Wild Dogs of Guinea Bissau in Bissau. In the first leg, the Super Eagles were stunned 1-0 by the less-endowed Guineans. It is a common joke amongst Nigerians that our national teams are afraid of any Guinea at all. Whether Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, or ‘Guinea fowl’, the word Guinea is said to be enough to give Nigerian national teams a nightmare. But this was not the case in the heydays of the Green Eagles and later the Super Eagles when even legendary Guinean players like Titi Camara, Ibrahim Yatarra, Souleyman Youla and a host of others dreaded playing against Nigeria.
Unfortunately, all that is gone maybe for good as apart from the Guineans, almost all other national teams in Africa are no longer afraid of tackling the Super Eagles. It is so bad that Nigeria now struggles to win against minnows like Sierra Leone even when playing at home.
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Already, some of us have written so many articles to explain the reasons behind the steady decline in the performance of the national teams, beginning from the cadet teams to the Super Eagles. It is an open secret that the root cause of the problem is total disregard for merit in the selection of players. Obviously, the national teams are no longer for the best players. It has become a free for all show. Any player who is privileged to be playing professional football abroad is considered good enough for the national teams.
This problem has become so serious that no home-based player is seen as being talented enough to play for the Super Eagles. We are all aware that Dutchman, Clemence Westerhof, won the 1994 AFCON with a good number of local players. At the moment, Jose Peseiro who is the Technical Adviser of the Super Eagles is doing eye service as he goes around Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) matches in the name of talent hunt.
Nigerians want the Super Eagles camp thrown wide open but the Portuguese is simply not keen on using local players. His predecessor, Gernot Rohr was a worse offender. Apart from Ikechukwu Ezenwa who was allowed to keep against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon following the career-ending ailment of Carl Ikeme, no other home-based player made it to the mainstream Super Eagles.
Despite the refusal of expatriate coaches to trust homegrown talents, Nigerians are adamant on their clamour for the inclusion of home-based players in the national team. Most football pundits believe that a combination of the European style of football acquired by Nigerians plying their trade in Europe and the physicality offered by local players will help arrest the decline in the national team. They feel strongly that our over-reliance on foreign-based players who are often times forced to represent Nigeria is a serious problem. Of course, you can force a donkey to the river but you can’t force it to drink water. There are many of such unwilling players in the present squad of the Super Eagles.
However, even as it has become necessary to re-echo the unrelenting position of the advocates for the inclusion of local players in the national teams, it is also necessary to reiterate that recent failures recorded by the CHAN Eagles have not done their reputation any good. The inability of the Home-based Eagles to qualify for the last CAHN in Algeria has no doubt de-marketed them. Their case is made worse by the underwhelming performances of the NPFL clubs in continental competitions. At the moment, only Rivers United who started out in the Champions League are representing Nigeria in the second-tier CAF inter-clubs competition, the Confederation Cup. The quartet of Plateau United, Remo Stars and Kwara United had fallen by the wayside.
Personally, I am not allowing the shortcomings of the home-based players to change my mind on the need for them to be given a fair chance in the Super Eagles and other junior national teams like the Olympic Eagles. I have no doubt in my mind that there are still good players in the NPFL who are only waiting for a chance to make a big statement about their suitability for the senior national team. The fact that most of these players are quickly invited to the Super Eagles once they sign contracts abroad says a lot about the injustice being meted to the Home-based players. This is one of the reasons that even some of our top talents are eager to leave the shores of this country for any obscure club in Europe. They know it is a sure ticket to the Super Eagles.
Well, the sooner we realise that some local players are even more talented than some of their compatriots in Europe, the better for our football. No wonder, it is the same preference for foreign-based players that has retained Francis Uzoho as Super Eagles goalkeeper even with all his hypertensive performances.
Without any fear of contradiction, Uzoho is too analogue to be Super Eagles’ first-choice goalkeeper. Among many other deficiencies, he is not a ball-playing keeper. He fumbles each time he attempts a dribble the way Ederson or Allison does effortlessly. Let’s give a talented local goalkeeper like Victor Sochima, Ojo Olorunleke, Emmanuel Daniel or Adewale Adeyinka a chance.
