SportsGuard: Insatiable Nigerian fans

[MrVan]

By Patrick Omorodion

Human wants are insatiable. When it is hot, they want it cold and when it is cold, they say it should have been hot. Always looking for what is not. That is the mentality of most Nigerian football fans and they exhibited it before and after the Super Eagles Nations Cup decider against the Lone Star of Liberia in Calabar.

After the Eagles blew a 2-1 lead in Monrovia last month and allowed the Lone Star to draw level at 2-2, many a football fan, including some pessimistic members of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, became apprehensive that the Liberians could come and create an upset here, the same way the Guineans did to thwart their 2012 Nations Cup hope.

Their fear was made worse by the boastful nature of the Liberia Football Association Chairman, Musa Bility, who spoke almost on a daily basis on Brila FM radio in Lagos. These Nigerians did not ponder that Bility's hope of an upset over the Eagles rested on some Liberian players coming from some obscure clubs in Europe or some players who were perpetual bench warmers in some Premiership clubs.

When Stephen Keshi decided to in invite a 35-man squad, including 15 Europe-based players to begin preparation for the encounter, these same fans argued that it was wieldy and unnecessary. They forgot that when Keshi invited less Foreign-based players they had said he was taking a big risk and should have invited more from the foreign league because of their experience.

From the training session in Abuja down to Calabar, the fans said the Liberians who were camped in Accra, Ghana for the encounter were preparing better than the Eagles, more so when they had a tune-up match against the Menas of Niger Republic a few days to D-day.

While the scepticism continued, Keshi remained unperturbed, saying that he was more concerned about how his boys reacted to his training regime than what the Liberians were doing because the turf of the U.J. Esuene Stadium would decide who was better.

This is not to say that all the Nigerian fans were sceptical about the Eagles chances against Liberia. Hours before kick off, the optimistic few were equivocal in their prediction that the Liberians were going to fall, some said by 2-0, others said 3-0. One man, incidentally a sports journalist with Ray power FM radio, Callistus Ebare, who watched the daily training sessions of the Eagles, was emphatic that the score cannot be anything less than 5-0.

True to Ebare's prediction, the Eagles tore Liberia apart on the day. As if they wanted to maintain the 5-0 margin he predicted, the Eagles increased their goal haul to six when the visitors managed to score one.

The score-line of that match that made the Eagles the hottest legs of the last day of the qualifiers did not matter to the pessimists who echoed that the Eagles were not too fantastic. They added that the Liberians did the playing while the Eagles did the scoring.

If it was the other way round, that the Eagles played so well, samba football as it were but lost the match and the ticket, the same set of fans would have descended on Keshi, calling for his head.

Among the big countries that missed out of the 2012 Nations Cup in Equatorial Guinea/Gabon, Nigeria and Algeria are the only ones who succeeded this time while Egypt and Cameroon failed once again to make it. Cameroon crashed at the hands of Cape Verde, of all countries, who are going to debut at the African football festival for the first time.

This is not to say that Keshi has done all he has to do to get to the last four of the Nations Cup, the Eagles birth right so to speak for some time now. He too is aware of the lapses in the team and has said that he would now concentrate on polishing the rough edges noticed during the qualifiers so as to put up a respectable performance in South Africa.

It is wrong for some fans never to see anything good in what the Eagles are doing because of some poor performances in the past. The new team Keshi is trying to mould will take some time to solidify and return to the Clemens Westerhof era when the Eagles were the pride of the continent. May be not even at the 2013 Nations Cup.

This is where the NFF comes in, by providing the wherewithal for the players and the technical crew to plan strategies, not only for the Nations Cup but the 2014 World Cup qualifies which is next and very important.

The Eagles need quality friendly matches as a build-up to the Nations Cup. The NFF is already thinking in the direction of the Elephants of Cote d'Ivoire and Black Stars of Ghana, unarguably the biggest teams among the qualifiers. Incidentally both sides fell to Zambia at the 2012 edition, the same Zambia the home Eagles beat in Kaduna in a friendly preparatory to a qualifier for the Equatorial Guinea/Gabon party.  The Nations Cup is significant to Nigeria and the Eagles.

As defending champions, the Eagles failed to attend the 1996 edition on the same soil after Nigeria's maximum ruler then, General Sani Abacha pulled the team out after Nelson Mandela, then South African president slammed him for the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni eight a few months earlier in 1995.  Till date, some die hard Nigerian fans, including South Africa-based former Eagles goalkeeper, Idah Peterside, are always quick to remind the Rainbow nation that they won the 1996 Nations Cup because the Eagles where absent. 2013 provides the chance for that argument to be affirmed or debunked by Nigerians and South Africans respectively.

Vanguard Nigeria

[Nifemi Donald]

dont mind Nigerians