I need to do this. Permit me this day to pay a little tribute to my elder brother. Only God knows what really happened that night. It was Monday, March 4, 2013. That was the day I arrived from a trip abroad. We spoke shortly after my arrival that morning, my brother and I. I caught up with him later in the office we shared. For six hours we worked together. We parted at about 5:30pm. At about 7:30 pm a freak storm appeared suddenly from nowhere and punctuated the night with streaks of lightning and the sound of thunder announcing an approaching thunderstorm. Shortly after that the heavens opened their floodgates and released their content of torrential rain that lasted for about an hour or so. At about 9:30pm the nightmare began. My phone rang. It was Zainab my brother’s wife. It took a while to understand what she was saying. When I finally did, time stopped! . I learnt later that my brother had been caught in a traffic jam created by the rain along Agege Motor Road between Mushin Olosha and Idi-Oro, a notorious stretch of road, known for flooding during even the mildest of rains. The poor drainage and the resultant floods often have ...

The International (Sports) Academy, TIA, a co-educational,  Secondary Sports School, established by former Super Eagles player and captain, 1 Goal Ambassador, and Nigeria’s Ambassador for Sports Chief Segun Odegbami“Mathematical”, is now open to admit students for the 2013/2014 academic session. The school offers a full-time, fully residential, JSS1 to SS3 classes in science, art and commercial subjects. Above all, our students during their  stay in the institution undergo rigorous training in any one of the 5 sports within the school namely, basketball, tennis, athletics, table tennis and football to prepare them for a possible career in sports. We are the first and one of the few institutions in Nigeria currently offering students a platform to combine first class academics with world class sports. WHAT WE OFFER · WAEC, NECO, GCE O'Level · Tourism and Photography vocational courses · University Pre-Degree Programmes · Exposure to high-level sports · Athletic Trials and Competitions home and abroad · Serene Teaching and learning environment · Qualified coaches and teachers · Modern classroom buildings, fully equipped laboratories, ICT facility, fully stocked library, Basketball and Tennis Court, Table-Tennis Hall, football  pitch, comfortable boarding facilities. ADMISSION The process of admission into the 2013/2014 academic year has commenced. There are very limited spaces. CRITERIA · Students must have completed JSS3 (for SS1 applicants) · Must have completed their primary school education (for JSS1 applicants) · Must not be older than 11 years (for JSS1 ...

What a week. What an incredible series of UEFA matches. On Tuesday and Wednesday this past week I was privileged to witness once again the best of football in three incredible matches that had everything – the good, the bad, the unpredictable, the truly beautiful, the spectacular and much more. The first match took place in Munich. Arsenal FC defeated Bayern Munich on the hallowed ground of the Allianz Arena. Common, wake me up, it cant be true. A team that has shown neither class nor style all season, that has given its millions of global supporters more headache and heartache than joy and cheer, went to the home ground of one of the world’s most disciplined and successful teams, a team that hardly ever loses a match on its ground no matter the quality of opposition, and came away with a 2-0 victory even with a very average performance! It is incredible that although Arsenal FC still did not qualify for the next round despite that victory, their defeat of the great Bayern Munich FC has been a soothing balm of some sort for ‘gunners’ who can’t seem to remember what it feels like to win a silver ware. The second even more dramatic ...

Recall from last week: It is the evening of the eve of the final match of Afcon 2013. I am looking at my crystal ball, and I see an eagle hovering high up in the sky in majestic splendour, its squinted eyes riveted on a target below – a gold trophy. Suddenly, like a meteorite falling from the sky, the eagle dives down headlong, its wings spread out, its two feet hanging menacingly loose. It smothers the trophy, almost covering it from sight with its flapping wings. With powerful claws, in one seamless movement, it lifts the crown and soars back high into the sky just as darkness descends upon the face of the earth. In that same moment, the pounding hooves of a galloping stallion punctuate the scene, it’s breath a labored panting, its nostrils flailing, spewing smoke and fire, and dripping spittle. It screeches crazily to a shuddering halt, looking helplessly and hopelessly into the darkening sky at the retreating eagle, the prize between its feet, flying away and fading into the distance, into the night, into the darkness. My crystal ball goes blank and then black for the last time. The drama that has gripped the whole world is over. The eagle has ...

There is already an ocean of football academies scattered all over Nigeria. Conservatively, in the absence of actual figures, there must be hundreds of them sprouting in villages and towns. They can be found everywhere, in every street corner, and in every open space that can accommodate a football game between two teams. So pervasive is the belief that there is easy money to be made from discovering, 'growing' and selling players that, right now, there are almost as many football academies, scouts and agents as there are the players themselves. Trading in young football players is a legitimate business. With some luck, discovering and selling a young and gifted player can be very lucrative, turning around the fortune of the player and his agent. But it is the academy that provides the platform. The coach must first go out to the academy to seek out and to discover that exceptional talent, that special player, the Mikel Obi, or Joseph Yobo in a sea of other talented young players. He must present the player to an agent who will decide if the player can cope with the rigours and standards of professional football, particularly in Europe. The player is then sent ...

All is now set for the 2012 London Olympics, anticipated by many as, potentially, the best Olympic games ever. Before 1976 the Olympic Games were to me a very distant event reserved for the gods. Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Mercury, Poseidon and all the other gods of Greek mythology competed amongst themselves for the pleasure of the King sitting on his sepulchred throne on Mount Olympus. With a broad smile on his White angelic face twitching long, white beards, with several beautiful goddesses around him, his Majesty sat and watched the lesser gods as they rode winged horses and drove chariots of fire, threw the discus and javelin, shot arrows, swam across the seas, and raced against each around the earth at blistering pace. That was my understanding of the original Olympics fed into my little mind by the colourful fictional magazines that I consumed like food in my very youthful days. I never connected the Olympic games with ordinary mortals. In the city of Jos where I grew up in the 1960s there was no television, so we never watched the games. We only followed them on the BBC or Voice of America. The radio commentaries were musical fairy tales to our ...

To write about Spain at Euro 2012, one must start with Barcelona. Some weeks ago on this page, I described Barcelona as the best football club in the world. From the scathing responses I received, many readers did not agree with me. Barcelona impressed me very much in the past few years, win or lose. The team was playing a brand of football I had never seen before and winning. Before I started to watch and understand the football revolution that was going on inside the Barcelona Academy at Camp Nou I often wondered what else could be introduced to the game of football that would result in a completely unique playing style and character to drastically change the way the game is played? What could be so radically different in football tactics or philosophy to impact on a team and make it the best in the world for years? Since total football was introduced in the early 1970s by the Dutch national team nothing of that magnitude had happened again to the game until Barca came along in the middle of the last decade. It is Barcelona that discovered and introduced the secret formula that the rest of the world has since been trying ...

Many people have asked me what team I support. They often expect me to name any one of several teams in the English Premiership. I dissappoint them with my choice. I am an unrepentant fan of the Barcelona FC football style and tradition. Two seasons ago I wrote about the club, what makes them the greatest football team in the world at the time. I also paid my respect to the greatest player I have seen in world football. Two seasons later, my position has been even more reinforced. I consider myself an extremely lucky human being to be alive at this time in history to be able to watch Barcelona FC of the Spanish La Liga at play. I marvel as I think of the following phenomena in human evolution: the internet, satellite television, the mobile phone, the GPS, digital technology, the political 'upheavals' in the Middle East, Usain Bolt (yes, the fastest human ever to run), and the still unfolding football wonders of the world - Barcelona FC and Lionel Messi! The last bits are my interest here. What we are witnessing in football, as epitomised by these two, are unprecedented in the history of the game. I consider humanity as ...

This is politics of the football kind. The Nigerian Minister of Sports led a delegation to FIFA in Zurich two weeks ago to inform the FIFA President that peace had finally returned to Nigerian football. Mr. Sepp Blatter was reported to have congratulated him and the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, for finding a way to settle the crisis that has been lingering since August 2010 following the controversial elections into the Executive Committee of the NFF. Before 2010 the body that had been administering football in Nigeria was known as the Nigeria Football Association, NFA. In 2010 the congress of the association changed its name to Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, as part of a grand strategy to become independent of government control, organise elections into the Executive Committee of the body without government interference, and to perpetuate themselves in office. This was a board that most Nigerians felt had not done well particularly as a result of Nigeria's poor run at both the Africa Cup of Nations and the World Cup in 2010. Some administrators outside the NFA smelt a rat and raised an alarm. Meanwhile, the NFF was not registered by the outgoing board as a private organisation in accordance with ...

I watched some truly terrific football matches this past week in the various European club championships. That I have chosen to write on another subject matter entirely surprises me also. But the finals of Nigeria's biggest grassroots football championship, the All Nigeria Secondary Schools Football Championship for the NNPC/Shell Cup takes place this weekend in Lagos, Nigeria, so all eyes shall be riveted there in search of the next generation of players for Nigeria's junior national teams. I look to the schools system always for grassroots sports development following the American model of sports development. Nigerians know my passion for the combination of football and formal education, particularly for Africans. Our uncommon passion and love for football has made football more than just a game. It has become a game of survival for the young African boy. Thats why the followership of European football in the continent is out of this world. Thats why Arsenal FC has more fans of the club in Nigeria than in any other country in the world outside England. If the figures for the fan base of clubs like Manchester United, Barcelona and Chelsea are also computed as has been done for Arsenal they may not ...