"It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies." -Arthur Caldwell (1896-1973), Australian Labour Party leader from 160-1967.
Nigerian football followers would always have fond memories of the 1989 FIFA Under-20 World Cup held in Saudi Arabia simply for the heroic performance of the Flying Eagles.
In the quarterfinals against the former Soviet Union (USSR), the boys from Nigeria wrote themselves into eternity when they came back from a four-goal deficit with barely 30 minutes to spare and scored four goals in 24 minutes before finishing off the job in a penalty shootout. They also rode on the back of the USA with a 2-1 win (after extra time) to become the first African Under-20 side to reach a FIFA World Youth Championship final, before losing to Portugal 2-0 in the decisive match. That expedition has gone into Nigerian football’s folktale as the ‘Dammam Miracle.’
Nigerian football is indeed replete with such fleeting glories at underage tournaments and it goes without saying that the game has been the worst for it with the over-celebrated youngsters failing to make it when it mattered most. The issue of age cheats in the game has been said over and again, but I think the players in question are the worst for it for the simple reason that they can’t last long in the game as one would have expected thereby, denying themselves enormous income.
A regular reader of this column, Michael Adekunle actually alerted that Kasey Keller, who was in goal when we beat the Americans at the 1989 FIFA Under-20 World Cup, is still very much active some 22 years after.
“It is ironic that Kasey Keller, who was in goal when USA played Nigeria at the Under-20 World Cup in 1989, would soon be calling it quits with his professional football career. But none of the Nigerian players played up to 10 seasons after that match with the exception of Mutiu Adepoju and Chris Ohenhen,” Adekunle buzzed me via the SMS.
He further stated that it was a shame that goalkeeper Angus Ekeji and Emeka Amadi, who were documented to be far younger than Keller were unable to last longer when I reminded him that goalkeepers naturally have longevity than outfield players.
Keller has featured for nine clubs and would round off his career with his native club, the Seattle Sounders at the end of the current Major League Soccer (MLS) season. In between, he has equally played in the English Premiership, Spanish La Liga as well as German Bundesliga and he is just 41 years of age. Before retiring from international football, Keller represented USA in four FIFA World Cup finals (1990, 1998, 2002 and 2006) with a record 102 caps as the most capped goalkeeper in America’s soccer history.
Curiously, many Nigerian players have since retired from the game in their late 30s and you begin to wonder how plausible that is when they were just expected to be at the peak of their game.
So many tales abound that some players who were paraded as Under-17s in the past were actually granddaddies. There were other stories of players who refused to grow when they were placed on special diet on getting to Europe to the chagrin of officials who could not understand why a particular player was just protruding in shape rather than gaining height!
In 2007, when the Golden Eaglets tutored by the late ‘Professor’ Yemi Tella, conquered the world in Korea, I raised a thought-provoking question: Eaglets won... and so what?
Similarly, the Vanguard Newspaper in its editorial asked: “Do we celebrate the fact that only few of the players who won this competition in 1985 and 1993 graduated to the senior national team?”
Today, how many players from the Golden Eaglets’ class of 2007 are in a decent club abroad, not to talk of playing for the Super Eagles? Besides Haruna Lukman, who recently moved from Monaco to Dynamo Kiev, majority of the players are in the lower leagues with some further afield in Vietnam. So long are we going to wait to see them fulfil the great potentialities they displayed as budding stars at the Under-17 level.
Of course, it is easy to blame coaches for fielding over-aged players in tournaments, but what is the societal attitude towards the age cheats?
On a recent trip to Kumasi for the second leg of the All Africa Games qualifier against Ghana, a colleague told us how he stopped his sibling from cutting almost 10 years off his age just to ‘bolster’ his football career and I think it is only when we all have such attitude that Nigerian football would be better off on the long run. It is about time that this shortcut to success be discouraged and until that is done, it would be hard to see players playing as long as Keller in this clime.
London 2012: ‘A criminality nightmare’ waiting to happen? 
Is London 2012 Olympic ‘A criminality nightmare’ waiting to happen? This question is germane in the wake of the riotous scene that enveloped the United Kingdom during the week barely a year away from the 21st Olympiad in London.
Of course, the riot has nothing to do with the forthcoming Games, but just imagine what the Western media would have said if similar incident had happened elsewhere ahead of a major sporting event?
Months away from the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the foreign media, ably led by the cynical English media, had sneered that the African continent was not worthy of hosting the party because of the ‘high crime rate’ in Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation.
In his commentary in the January 2010 edition of World Soccer magazine, Keir Radnedge, who doubles as the Chairman of AIPS (International Sports Press Association) Football Commission stated: "The issue raising most concern and most scaremongering headlines is personal security. Crime statistics and stories severely compromise one of South Africa's tourism's blurbs that 'the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be the country's biggest success story since our first democratic elections in 1994."
Such was some of the offensive remarks in the foreign media and one wonders what was the motive other than paranoia of anything African. This was all the more so following further scathing attacks about the capability and suitability of South Africa to host the event after the terrorist attack on Togo’s national team bus on their way to the African Cup of Nations in Angola.
The insensibilities of the Western media infuriated everyone including FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, who stated in a frank exchange with German Press Agency, DPA: “It is nonsense to combine what has happened in Angola with a terrorist attack and link it to the South Africa World Cup. Eleven million tourists travel every year to South Africa. Last week an ATP [tennis] tournament was played in Johannesburg, and they didn't die.
“It’s kind of an anti-Africa movement; this is not right. There is still, in the so called 'old world', a feeling that 'why the hell should South Africa organise a World Cup.' Why the hell? It was easier for them to go down to Africa, the colonialists in the past hundred years, to take out all the best, and now to take out all the best footballers. And when you have to give something back they don't want to go. What's that? It is a lack of respect, a lack of respect for the whole of Africa.”
But the same is not being said about London 2012 today simply because the event is not on an African soil, for instance. Incidentally, the riot (which reportedly spread through London suburbs as well as to the city centres of Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool) came at a bad timing for organisers of London 2012 Games with chef de missions of the 204 Olympic national associations on hand to discuss about the Games arrangements for transport, food, accommodation and security amongst others.
Elsewhere, Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera and Russia's Moskovskie Novosti paper reportedly described the London riot as an 'urban guerrilla war' and 'pogrom' respectively.
The New York Times also stated: “With the Games set to begin in barely 12 months, Britain will have to satisfy Olympic officials that there is no major risk of the Games being disrupted, or ruined, by a replay of the rioting.” Think this is an opportunity for ANOCA (the umbrella association of Africa’s national Olympic association) to ask their English counterparts if London 2012 Olympics ‘is criminality nightmare waiting to happen?
After all, whatever goes round must surely come round. But as noted in George Orwell‘s Animal Farm, ‘all animals are equal, but some are more equal than the others.’
Welcome back Troussier, farewell Amofah!  |
| Ghana'99: Amofah(r) with Moraks |
On the first day in the month of August 2011 came this cheering news from my friend and brother, Maxwell Kumoye (whom we fondly called Troussier): “After six months, I’m back on my feet again.’
Good news doesn’t get better than that. I was simply in ecstasy that our friend was back on his feet again after a ‘mad driver’ crushed his leg on his way home on January 23.
I never got to know of this until March 1. By that time, the ever bubbling Troussier was on crutches.
Even while tending his unfortunate injury, Troussier was steadily playing his role as one of the producers of Peak Soccer Moment anchored by the wordsmith, Mitchell Obi.
Charles Swindoll, author, educator and radio preacher said of resilient people: “People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life's circumstances to push them down and hold them under.”
It is such uncommon resilience-facing life’s difficulties with courage, patience and refusing to give up that stood Troussier out at his darkest hour and he admitted himself: “It is Jehovah that granted me power beyond what was normal.”
Of course, life is full of mixed grill. One minute you are celebrating, the next you are wailing!
That same day, I belatedly learnt of the passing away of my buddy, Tony Amofah in Ghana.
I struck friendship with Tony around 1997 when he was recruited as a Ghanaian correspondent for the now rested Complete Football International.
An extrovert, Tony was always with a smile and was a dutiful host on my several visits to the former Gold Coast. Always resourceful, Tony can go a mile just to please his friends. We were like Siamese twins anytime I was in Accra and it is sad that my adorable Tony has passed on.
It was our mutual friend, Durosimi Thomas ( the roving correspondent of BBC’s Fast Track programme who recently relocated to Sierra Leone after his sojourn in Ghana) that actually broke the news of Toni’s death as a result of Leukaemia sometime last year to me last week! What a life.
Farewell, Tony! God knows when we shall meet again!
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