It is Wednesday night. Earlier this evening I watched the Eagles humble an ordinary Mozambican team that did not look any bit like the team that almost halted Nigeria’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup finals. What a come back from the dead that was.

Having said that, there are lessons to be learnt from the victory of the Eagles and, by extension, the survival of all the big African teams beyond the first round. The first is that in African football there is a minimum level of success below which some countries in the continent must never fall. That’s the nature of the game. Brazil must not fail to qualify for every World Cup, or be eliminated from the first round of any authentic football championship in the world. It is their birthright! Just as Germany, Italy and Argentina (and a few host countries) would almost always get to the final rounds of the World Cup and one of them will win it! That’s why only those few countries continue to monopolise the World Cup; that’s why only a few countries also in Africa continue to almost completely monopolise winning the African Cup of Nations; that’s why despite all the talk of no more minnows in African football and of little countries catching up with the ‘giants’ of African football, no minnow has yet won the championship. The same few countries, identifiable by name, would continue always to find the answer in the depth of the culture of the game to claw their way back, sometimes ‘fumbling and wobbling’ to do so, to get to the final rounds of the championship and win it. They always find the way to get to a minimum level below which it is unacceptable to fall! They demonstrate this commitment in the way they play every time. A good example is the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon. And Egypt! And Ghana! Recall how all three fought like enraged lions from defeat in their first matches to qualify from their groups! That’s why no analyst in the world, or pundit, would put their money on the possibility that in a hundred years countries like Benin Republic, India, Kenya, or Trinidad and Tobago could win the World Cup. It can’t happen. It won’t happen.  And this has nothing to do with playing God, or having some magical powers, or praying for a miracle!  It is just plan commonsense and the natural law of things!  That’s the way things have evolved in the game through time.

Having said that, the same cannot be said of Cameroon, or Ghana, or even Nigeria. Some analysts, some pundits, would put their money that in the next few years one of these African countries can win the World Cup! That is the measure of who we are and where our country stands in the scale of world football. Nigeria has the capacity and the capability to win the World Cup in the very near future! Why then should we think any less of ourselves and aim for anything less than the ultimate every time?   

Football is a tradition. Nigeria must NEVER fall below a certain minimum level in African football and African football competitions. We know those teams that can beat us and those that should never beat us. Call it pride or what you will, select players from the remotest part of the country, get them the worst coach in the country, and send them to the African Cup of Nations. The expectations of Nigerians must never change. Under no circumstance must we expect that Nigeria would not qualify for every African Cup of Nations. Under no circumstance must the country accept that her national team would not qualify for the World Cup when there are five places available to fight for in a continent of 53 countries! Under no circumstances must Nigerians accept that we can fail to reach a minimum level of a continental championship. So, we should not celebrate that Nigeria scaled through the first round of the ongoing African Cup of Nations. That should never count as an achievement in the measure of who we are in African football.  We can be relieved that we survived the scare but not celebrate it.  

The second lesson to take away from the match against Mozambique is that whosoever was contemplating hiring the coach of the country, some unknown entity from the world of football, as is being touted in some media, to come and handle Nigeria’s national team should banish the idea. The days of football journey-men-coaches handling the Super Eagles, should be gone forever. A White skin and some funny title like ‘Magic man,’ ‘White witch doctor’, ‘Black panther’, ‘Anointed one’, or such funny aliases, designed to hoodwink us, should be gone forever.  How can anyone that saw how the Mozambican team play ever contemplate that the coach that put together such an ordinary team deserves to coach Nigeria?  Once again let me reiterate that Nigeria is one of the few true giants in African football that cannot be written off as incapable of winning the World Cup. After our successes at other levels the world knows better than to think so. We cannot, therefore, start to think less of ourselves and our capability and start to tinker with the shallow idea of hiring some ordinary coach that has used his sojourn in African football to build his profile to come and coach our national team. The idea that he may understand the tradition of Africans and their football because he has coached some African countries does not hold any water. Any good coach worth his salt would take any good team and turn it into a great one irrespective of tradition or culture!

Beyond the African Cup of Nations and into the future, should Nigeria decide that a foreign coach is what the country needs in order to elevate its football to the zenith of World football, it must not settle for anything less than the best available in the world by the records of their performance and the successes the teams they handle achieved! That’s the only measure. Even that does not guarantee success but must be our prerequisite minimum requirement. If for patriotic reasons we choose to make use of our own we must be dispassionate in selecting only those that have ALL the minimum requirements in personal football experience at the highest level, a great playing career, intelligence, records of exposure, and a big dream! With all due respect to the other African countries a coach whose vision is limited to celebrating victories over minnows like Benin, Mauritius, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania and all those other small countries that should be our whipping boys any day, anywhere, should never smell the position of national coach of Nigeria.

We may not win every African Cup of Nations. In fact, we will not. But we must never settle for accepting that anything short of an ambition to win it should be our target! I congratulate the Eagles and the technical crew for beating Mozambique. Nothing less is expected. This will surely restore the confidence the team needs to go farther in the championship.   I congratulate them for beating Gabon, or Zambia, even though as I write this the decisive matches are yet to be played as nothing less is expected or acceptable! Beyond that we shall start to play against stronger opposition, other giants whose defeat would justify some celebration!    

I commend the Super Eagles for relieving the whole country of the threat of what would have been an ignoble and humiliating first round exit from an African championship. That would have ranked the worst performance in our history and would have been a great dent on the image of a country that enjoys universal acclaim and recognition for its football! Beyond that I have nothing more to say other than urge the Eagles to still dig deep where the inspiration to play the last match came from, and march on to more possible victories!

Remembering Clemens Westerhof’s Theorem

I have written about Westerhof’s theorem several times in the past. Whilst he was boss of the Super Eagles he believed that the national team always rose up to the occasion whenever there appeared to be crisis in the team. So convinced was he of the efficacy of his belief that often times he would create crisis even when there was none just to get the eagles angry and performing!

Did you observe how the Eagles played last Wednesday? Did they look any where near the teams that played the first two games. Where they charged by the threat of humiliation and the crisis over the issue of their coached? Is Westerhof’s theorem not a truism even now! I rest my case!