February 24, 2010
Recently, I wrote a piece titled, “The Obvious Choice” where I briefly analysed the three foreign candidates reportedly shortlisted for the job of managing the Super Eagles. Though in that article, my obvious choice was and still is Lars Lagerback for reasons I gave there; but this follow-up article is not dealing with the individual choice.
Recently, I wrote a piece titled, “The Obvious Choice” where I briefly analysed the three foreign candidates reportedly shortlisted for the job of managing the Super Eagles. Though in that article, my obvious choice was and still is Lars Lagerback for reasons I gave there; but this follow-up article is not dealing with the individual choice.
It is addressing the notion of choosing a foreign coach/manager for our national team and the question of whether patriotism or nationalism has got anything to do with it. For me, I believe people should stop being jingoistic about this issue. There’s no reason to equate the call for a foreign coach or manager to some kind of unpatriotic act neither should we assume that the fact that we cannot produce one that can do a job is some kind of national indictment. Any good follower of the game would know that international football has several aspects that do not lend themselves to some holistic nationalistic definition.
In truth, the only aspect of international football that lends itself to a patriotic garb is the support of the fandom. It is expected that nationals and citizens of a country will first and foremost support their national team. While the point is made that it’s just sport; it does a lot for the national psyche to watch people of different ethnic background within one nation come under one flag to support their countrymen competing with nationals of other countries. However, the business of international football has nothing to do with simplistic patriotism. It’s all about management and getting the best hands to do whatever is necessary to achieve your national goal, which is winning or doing well in major championships and international competitions. To that extent, the best for the job can come from anywhere; they don’t necessarily have to come from your country.
In fact, even on the playing side, it has become orthodox to get good players of other nationals playing in the national teams of other countries. For instance, there are people of Nigerian descent today playing in other international teams. So, while we wax patriotic, we need to be a little more realistic. Yeah, we are almost a hundred and fifty million and we can’t find a single qualified individual within to manage the national football team, but that shouldn’t be an embarrassment. It shouldn’t be, because it is not a function of bad national leadership or politics. If it were, Russia, China, Japan, England, Turkey, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, etc would not be falling over themselves to hire foreign coaches or managers as they have. As I said, it’s all about getting the best management team in place under the best man to deliver the best result for the nation. In fact, the only reason we are having this debate now is because in Nigeria football is such an emotive subject that a lot of people tend to think in a very insular way about it when it concerns the national team. Yet, for decades, just like everywhere else, Nigeria has been depending on foreign coaches for its basketball, taekwondo, judo, athletics, boxing teams and so on and the heavens have not fallen. In fact, not one drop of ink has been expended in protest in any newspaper. However, when it comes to football, the gates of hell are flung open!
No doubt, under normal circumstances, most of us would have preferred that a Nigerian coach handles the national team. A Nigerian managing the Nigerian team and infusing the Nigerian character into the team (so as to showcase something positively distinctive to the world) would have been the perfect national picture. However, considering that the bottom line is success, we have to grapple with the dilemma of having the raw material for this success at home amongst our people, but lacking the expertise to put them together and manage them to achieve this requisite success. Now, considering that football is a team sport, do we go all emotional and supposedly patriotic using inadequately qualified nationals to pursue the success and knowing we have no chance? Or do we simply get the missing expertise from anywhere we can get it and invest in the success we know our boys can achieve with such expertise? Should we sit and moan over the use of a foreign manager when other countries far more advanced (including the inventors of the game) are using it to compete against us? Or do we just simply look for the best we can get and join the fray?
The only problem I have now is hearing Patrick Ekeji say whoever is to be appointed would be short-term, with a mandate only to take us to the World Cup in South Africa. I just don’t know how advisable it is to spend all this time, effort and resources getting a foreign coach only to let them go after about four months if they do not win us the World Cup or take us far in the competition. First, it may look wise to say if the person succeeds in achieving relative success in South Africa, we can always renew their contract, but the irony is that we may actually be undermining the appointee with a contract that short and we certainly would be compromising the possibility of a good result in South Africa in many ways if that is the case.
For instance, considering that the main problem we have is players’ indiscipline and lack of proper motivation, giving them such an opportunity to easily sabotage someone who’ll come in there to shake them up is too tempting. All they have to do is go through the motions in South Africa with the hope that the man gets the sack thereafter or be denied a contract renewal. But if the appointee is given a two-year contract, for instance, that will make every player sit up and cooperate with him even if they don’t like him at the start, because they know their international careers depend on him for a considerable time at least. That way we will be giving the appointee at least one major competition (the African Cup of Nations to be co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in 2012) to prepare for with his own team, not one he just inherited and took to the World Cup in South Africa. That competition can then be a referendum on his performance, along with the qualification campaign and the friendlies we would have participated in. If by then, we do not get the right result from him, we can do away with him and still have time to get it right before the next World Cup in 2014. If he’s fine, we will have time to consolidate and fine-tune the team for a proper challenge at the Mundial. I think Patrick Ekeji and the decision-makers need to review their stance. Doing all this for a four month contract is a waste of time, resources and effort. It will be ill-advised, because the effect will definitely be felt on the pitch. It is the surest ammunition to undermine the manager.
At this point, let me say something briefly about why we lack the expertise we now seek from foreign land. The lack of local coaches with the expertise to handle the Super Eagles is a symptom of the problem of lack of vision in football administration and management in the country. So, if we want to succeed in producing top quality coaches that would be capable of handling our national team, we need to solve the problem. First, we need to make sure that government interference in football administration and management is done away with fully. Yes, they can regulate and oversee the business, but not run it. Secondly, we need to reorganise the football playing structure to get investments in the right places, right up to the grassroots level. However, for a start, we need to reorganise the national Premier League and make it into some kind of showcase in Africa. Making real business and marketing success out of the domestic league is the key to developing the game and all the needed infrastructure and support that go with it.
It shouldn’t be difficult. Some of our best known names in football in the days before European clubs began to poach them had to leave our shores to play professional football in places like Ivory Coast, Egypt and Tunisia. The fact that Egypt can put out teams made up of mostly home-based players to regularly win the African Cup of Nations is because the game is well-developed at home on the professional level. Hassan Shehata, one of the foreign coaches we were running after learnt his trade in Egypt. He is successful there because the support structure in terms of a vibrant national league, football academies, coaching institutions and national sponsorship are all there.
We really do not have to reinvent the wheel. Apart from African success stories to learn from, we can adapt the European template to our conditions, including their business and management models. How can we have Premier League teams in a country as football-crazy as Nigeria without their own stadiums? Where would they start from being run as viable and self-sustaining businesses if they cannot take advantage of merchandizing and media sponsorship and broadcast revenue? I think it’s time we get our football out of the Stone Age. We have the raw talent to invest in and we are still producing these talents in every street in Nigeria. The Nigerian Football Federation needs to begin serious business talk with big businesses and national and international media to get this project going. Once this happens, it would improve the domestic league immensely by attracting better national and international talent. This would in turn lead to better quality coaching as the competition will see the establishment of coaching institutions and the influx of Nigerian coaches into Europe to get their UEFA coaching badges. In no time, we will have Nigerian coaches not only handling quality domestic teams, but also big foreign teams who would want to invest in their talent as well. That way, we will not have a problem appointing a Nigerian coach to take us to the World Cup, because that inferiority in training and experience would no longer be there and if there, not as wide as it is now.
Kennedy Emetulu
London
It is addressing the notion of choosing a foreign coach/manager for our national team and the question of whether patriotism or nationalism has got anything to do with it. For me, I believe people should stop being jingoistic about this issue. There’s no reason to equate the call for a foreign coach or manager to some kind of unpatriotic act neither should we assume that the fact that we cannot produce one that can do a job is some kind of national indictment. Any good follower of the game would know that international football has several aspects that do not lend themselves to some holistic nationalistic definition.
In truth, the only aspect of international football that lends itself to a patriotic garb is the support of the fandom. It is expected that nationals and citizens of a country will first and foremost support their national team. While the point is made that it’s just sport; it does a lot for the national psyche to watch people of different ethnic background within one nation come under one flag to support their countrymen competing with nationals of other countries. However, the business of international football has nothing to do with simplistic patriotism. It’s all about management and getting the best hands to do whatever is necessary to achieve your national goal, which is winning or doing well in major championships and international competitions. To that extent, the best for the job can come from anywhere; they don’t necessarily have to come from your country.
In fact, even on the playing side, it has become orthodox to get good players of other nationals playing in the national teams of other countries. For instance, there are people of Nigerian descent today playing in other international teams. So, while we wax patriotic, we need to be a little more realistic. Yeah, we are almost a hundred and fifty million and we can’t find a single qualified individual within to manage the national football team, but that shouldn’t be an embarrassment. It shouldn’t be, because it is not a function of bad national leadership or politics. If it were, Russia, China, Japan, England, Turkey, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, etc would not be falling over themselves to hire foreign coaches or managers as they have. As I said, it’s all about getting the best management team in place under the best man to deliver the best result for the nation. In fact, the only reason we are having this debate now is because in Nigeria football is such an emotive subject that a lot of people tend to think in a very insular way about it when it concerns the national team. Yet, for decades, just like everywhere else, Nigeria has been depending on foreign coaches for its basketball, taekwondo, judo, athletics, boxing teams and so on and the heavens have not fallen. In fact, not one drop of ink has been expended in protest in any newspaper. However, when it comes to football, the gates of hell are flung open!
No doubt, under normal circumstances, most of us would have preferred that a Nigerian coach handles the national team. A Nigerian managing the Nigerian team and infusing the Nigerian character into the team (so as to showcase something positively distinctive to the world) would have been the perfect national picture. However, considering that the bottom line is success, we have to grapple with the dilemma of having the raw material for this success at home amongst our people, but lacking the expertise to put them together and manage them to achieve this requisite success. Now, considering that football is a team sport, do we go all emotional and supposedly patriotic using inadequately qualified nationals to pursue the success and knowing we have no chance? Or do we simply get the missing expertise from anywhere we can get it and invest in the success we know our boys can achieve with such expertise? Should we sit and moan over the use of a foreign manager when other countries far more advanced (including the inventors of the game) are using it to compete against us? Or do we just simply look for the best we can get and join the fray?
The only problem I have now is hearing Patrick Ekeji say whoever is to be appointed would be short-term, with a mandate only to take us to the World Cup in South Africa. I just don’t know how advisable it is to spend all this time, effort and resources getting a foreign coach only to let them go after about four months if they do not win us the World Cup or take us far in the competition. First, it may look wise to say if the person succeeds in achieving relative success in South Africa, we can always renew their contract, but the irony is that we may actually be undermining the appointee with a contract that short and we certainly would be compromising the possibility of a good result in South Africa in many ways if that is the case.
For instance, considering that the main problem we have is players’ indiscipline and lack of proper motivation, giving them such an opportunity to easily sabotage someone who’ll come in there to shake them up is too tempting. All they have to do is go through the motions in South Africa with the hope that the man gets the sack thereafter or be denied a contract renewal. But if the appointee is given a two-year contract, for instance, that will make every player sit up and cooperate with him even if they don’t like him at the start, because they know their international careers depend on him for a considerable time at least. That way we will be giving the appointee at least one major competition (the African Cup of Nations to be co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in 2012) to prepare for with his own team, not one he just inherited and took to the World Cup in South Africa. That competition can then be a referendum on his performance, along with the qualification campaign and the friendlies we would have participated in. If by then, we do not get the right result from him, we can do away with him and still have time to get it right before the next World Cup in 2014. If he’s fine, we will have time to consolidate and fine-tune the team for a proper challenge at the Mundial. I think Patrick Ekeji and the decision-makers need to review their stance. Doing all this for a four month contract is a waste of time, resources and effort. It will be ill-advised, because the effect will definitely be felt on the pitch. It is the surest ammunition to undermine the manager.
At this point, let me say something briefly about why we lack the expertise we now seek from foreign land. The lack of local coaches with the expertise to handle the Super Eagles is a symptom of the problem of lack of vision in football administration and management in the country. So, if we want to succeed in producing top quality coaches that would be capable of handling our national team, we need to solve the problem. First, we need to make sure that government interference in football administration and management is done away with fully. Yes, they can regulate and oversee the business, but not run it. Secondly, we need to reorganise the football playing structure to get investments in the right places, right up to the grassroots level. However, for a start, we need to reorganise the national Premier League and make it into some kind of showcase in Africa. Making real business and marketing success out of the domestic league is the key to developing the game and all the needed infrastructure and support that go with it.
It shouldn’t be difficult. Some of our best known names in football in the days before European clubs began to poach them had to leave our shores to play professional football in places like Ivory Coast, Egypt and Tunisia. The fact that Egypt can put out teams made up of mostly home-based players to regularly win the African Cup of Nations is because the game is well-developed at home on the professional level. Hassan Shehata, one of the foreign coaches we were running after learnt his trade in Egypt. He is successful there because the support structure in terms of a vibrant national league, football academies, coaching institutions and national sponsorship are all there.
We really do not have to reinvent the wheel. Apart from African success stories to learn from, we can adapt the European template to our conditions, including their business and management models. How can we have Premier League teams in a country as football-crazy as Nigeria without their own stadiums? Where would they start from being run as viable and self-sustaining businesses if they cannot take advantage of merchandizing and media sponsorship and broadcast revenue? I think it’s time we get our football out of the Stone Age. We have the raw talent to invest in and we are still producing these talents in every street in Nigeria. The Nigerian Football Federation needs to begin serious business talk with big businesses and national and international media to get this project going. Once this happens, it would improve the domestic league immensely by attracting better national and international talent. This would in turn lead to better quality coaching as the competition will see the establishment of coaching institutions and the influx of Nigerian coaches into Europe to get their UEFA coaching badges. In no time, we will have Nigerian coaches not only handling quality domestic teams, but also big foreign teams who would want to invest in their talent as well. That way, we will not have a problem appointing a Nigerian coach to take us to the World Cup, because that inferiority in training and experience would no longer be there and if there, not as wide as it is now.
Kennedy Emetulu
London
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