I can’t believe it myself, but I am not in Egypt for the 32nd edition of the African Cup of Nations championship that kicked off last night in Cairo. I am unable to travel to Egypt because my international passport has been stuck in the US embassy for the past 6 weeks. I submitted it for the renewal of my expired US visa. What used to be a routine one-week affair (before the drop-box system was abolished on May 10) has become an agonizingly endless wait that threatens to keep me away entirely from AFCON 2019.
Yet, I have a promise to keep that I made to a growing army of readers of my columns in several social media platforms including the new website, of course, www.mathematical7.com– to publish a daily diary of my experiences during the championship. These are bits and pieces of interesting and unusual things around the championship in general but around the Super Eagles of Nigeria in particular. The only way I can achieve that objective now without being physically in Egypt would require stretching creativity to the limit and do the impossible – become a fly on the wall in Egypt. That will be a very exciting journalistic challenge that may either blow up in my face should anything go wrong, or make me a G should it succeed.
That’s why I am so excited and inviting everyone to join me every day for the next 30 days on this page!!!
Day 1
Today is Day 1 of my diary but Day 2 of the championship.
Osasu Obayiuwana, a man gradually becoming one of the best and most influential investigative sports journalists in Africa, was my guest at home yesterday morning. He provided me with my first ‘drone’ over Egypt. For the second time since we played against each other on the green turf of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, I re-connected with Leo Tenga through Osasu.
Leo was a defender for Tanzania in 1980 when I played against him in the opening match of the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations, a match of the magnitude of what the world saw last night in Cairo. On that night in Lagos, before an audience of some 80,000 spectators, the Green Eagles were on fire. We knocked 3 goals passed Pondamali. I netted the third of those goals with a simple header that Leo still remembers and recalls in our short conversation.
Since then, some 39 years ago, Leo and I never met. We did yesterday courtesy of technology. He is now one of my eyes in Egypt. A member of CAF’s Executive Committee, a seat he occupies by virtue of his position as President of Tanzania Football Federation. He is one of only two members (the other is Kalusha Bwalya) that were ex-international footballers in their time.
Leo brought me up to date on the political crisis in CAF that was going to be a distraction to the actual championship – the dangerous decision of the President of CAF to propose that FIFA comes to take over the day-to-day operations and financial activities of CAF for a period of 6 months (in the first instance) and help reform the African organization and put it on a sound administrative footing. He confirms that the Executive Committee has not approved Ahmad Ahmad’s proposal and that there is no agreement with FIFA on the issue yet.
Also in Egypt is another friend and international journalist, Satish Sekar, who summed up CAF this way: ‘Organization is a complete joke. Hard to get to anyone. Massive delays everywhere. Accreditation late. No information, no food. Utterly shambolic’. I really did not know what to make of that, but an organization that invites another to come and take over its operations must truly be in poor shape. The big worry was the likely impact of the crisis on the Championship itself. The answer came last night in Cairo.
So, like most others, I chose to shut my eyes to CAF with its problems and concentrate on what happens on the fields of play as well as around the Super Eagles of Nigeria, in particular. The championship left the tarmac last night. The opening ceremony on television was a blast, truly spectacular.
It was an excursion into the history of Egypt dramatized in movements, cultural dance, drama and pyrotechnics on the largest stage in the world – the football field! That was followed by a not-so-great football match that had an atmosphere, colour, 80,000 excited spectators, plenty of singing and dancing, but not the best of African football, understandably – it is the first match with all the pressures on the home team to do well. Today’s matches, including Nigeria’s against Burundi in Alexandria, will provide a better measure of what to expect for the rest of the championship. The Super Eagles, on paper, are one of the favourites to win the trophy. They are in a group that appears easy enough. They are likely to start well, improve with every match and go far in this new, expanded structure with 24 teams in a championship taking place in the summer months of June/July, a first also in history. Egypt won the opening match. They did not play brilliantly but did enough to earn their victory. The Zimbabweans put up a brave fight but could have played for an entire year the way they did and not scored a goal. That’s how potent their attack was – it did not exist. They, however, had a fantastic goalkeeper who was my choice of ‘Man of the match’.
So, what’s happening in the Super Eagles camp?
Everything seems to be well. The team is heavily guarded and protected from the public and the media. For the first time in a long while, probably because there is no Minister of Sports in place, and no members of the sports committees of the National Assembly (they have not been appointed yet), the camp is relatively empty of the usual flood of distractive visitors.
Samuel Kalu collapsed on the training ground yesterday and created a big scare. He was eventually revived and is reported to be alright now. He would, probably, be unavailable for today’s match to enable full medical investigation into what caused the incident that made life in camp dour. The entire team was worried for most of the rest of the day after the incident. So, all is set for this evening’s match as the Eagles march on with hope and plenty of prayers that all goes well.
Segun Odegbami
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