 |
| Stephen Keshi,the NFF trying to rain on his parade |
Nigeria does have some serious problems.The main one as we all know is corruption...then there is the lack of maintenance culture and also that everything foreign is best for us. Madness! The NFF has been trying to install a
technical assistant to so call help Keshi.Now theres nothing wrong with this,but does it have to be a foreign one? Where have all these foreign assistants of years gotten us?iF they are so good how come they are available four months to the world cup anyway?
Take the salary,the NFF will owe Keshi and his staff 8 months in salary and expect them to keep quiet.But they will pay a foreign coach in foreign currency,pay him 30 times what the Nigerians earn and never owe them a months salary! Yet the coach will not win the tournament or sometimes even qualify.But we will keep going back to them.We all know why.Glen Hoddle of England famously spilled the beans about when he was interviewed for the Nigeria job on how he was asked by officials to ask for more than he wanted in salary so that the officials can share the rest! This is what goes on.
Keshi does have some problems that i think are glaring to every Nigerian football fan who wants to be honest.And they are not footballing matters..it is totally outside that zone..but hey as long as the man keeps getting results,we have to grin and bear it and in my opinion and many Nigerians we are playing the best football we have played for 20 years or so..now if only Keshi can truly select the best players available,we will achieve even more.
What the NFF should be worrying about is address these problems,they can for example question why such and such player is in the team and another isn't.Take for example the Keeper of the Chan Championships.He has no riht being in that team.So why was he used throughout? Keshi also stubbornly refused to use the best young player in the world at the recently concluded World Youth Championships,simply cos the young man went to England to negotiate a deal.Whats wrong with the guy coming back afterwards? You make room for genius.We see top teams in the world flying some players back to their countries by private jet simply cos they wanna keep them fresh.Nigeria will never do that.But there is a fine line between failure and success.You do what you can to achieve that because history would not say ,oh they would have won the cup but for players missing..it will say you were knocked out! In cases like these the NFF should have intervened and say Keshi,we want this guy in the team full stop! Not tell him how to coach his players.This man won a cup we had not won for 20 years with so many foreign coaches so what's their problem? We can get better definitely but not as per inviting a foreign technical adviser.
Here's excerpts i found in the Vanguard saying Nigeria needs a technical adviser for Keshi this morning below:
Ghana were reduced to ten men in the CHAN semifinal match with Nigeria.
The Eagles could not find an answer to their power game and eventually lost to them.
Zimbabwe had a red card in the 17th minute in the 3rd place match and Eagles could not find a way to overwhelm them and just scored three minutes to full time. Same thing happened against Mexico in Houston last year when Eagles could not beat a ten man Mexican team. The first two matches of the last Nations Cup were brought to question and the circumstances that led to the rejuvenation of the team reviewed. On CHAN, a thorough analysis by the football federation did not frown at the inability of the Eagles to overwhelm the opponents with goals but their inability to find a clue and adapt to technical changes against Ghana and Zimbabwe.
And after also analysing the circumstances that they felt contributed immensely to Nigeria’s qualification for the 2014 World Cup, the Nigeria Football Federation Executive members have concluded that Stephen Keshi, the head coach of the Eagles needs some assistance to lead Nigeria well in the World Cup in Brazil.
And the technical committee members, we gathered, were to formally present their findings to Keshi today when the committee meets but they gathered last night that Keshi had travelled to the United States to meet with his family.
“We were not formally informed of his trip because we wanted to meet him on Monday(today) and tell him about our findings for the World Cup,”a top member of the federation said last night.
“We want to do well in the World Cup and we strongly feel that he needs a technical assistant,’’ the member said, adding, “it is about Nigeria and not individual aspirations. We want to break the African record of a quarterfinal berth in the World Cup and from all indications we know that Keshi needs a help. He will still lead the technical crew to Brazil and will remain the head coach. But we just want to attach somebody to him for the sake of improving Nigeria’s lot in the World Cup.”
Another top member of the Federation said that “a new hand could ask questions about certain things that may eventually help the team. Chigozia Agbim, for example, kept only two matches for his club throughout the season and has recently been dropped by his club, Enugu Rangers who registered four goal keepers and found him not good enough to be among their keepers.
That’s the keeper Keshi used in the CHAN competition and he embarrassed the country. That cannot happen in football nations. We don’t fold our arms while somebody leads us astray. If you closely watch our league you will find out that those who played CHAN in South Africa were not our best, some may not even make the second team of the bests in our league. We want to be sure that we make a true representation of the current best of Nigerian football in Brazil and a new hand may not give in to the kind of sentiments that we have noticed in the team now.”
Keshi, we gathered, had told the federation that he did not need a new technical assistant and that Sylvanus Okpala who was disengaged after the Nations Cup victory in South Africa be recalled. Many Nigerians have supported Keshi’s position on Okpala even if another assistant is to be engaged for the best interest of the Eagles in Brazil. The technical committee meeting will go on today in spite of Keshi’s absence which members are already frowning at.
In a summary of the excerpts,...they will not invite Sylvanus Okpalla because they won't be able to chop the money they need so badly..also football is not mathematics..sometimes the hardest teams to beat are 10 men..obviously these fools don't know that.But how can they? When they appoint soldiers and bankers on the technical board...i tire for my country i swear!