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Amodu’s Bag of Sour Grapes

April 5, 2010
Erstwhile Super Eagles of Nigeria gaffer, Shuaibu Amodu, is plagued with a special case of verbal diarrhoea that is both endemic and legendary. Relieved of his post two months ago after his team’s lack lustre showing at the African Nations’ Cup and cut to size by his hubris, Amodu has resorted to spewing forth inanities in a manner that nauseates and rankles.
His latest interview granted to a football website was vintage Amodu at his very worst—a man so uncouth and arrogant he should have been anything but coach of a national football team!

Sentiments aside, no one who really loved the Eagles was comfortable watching them play while under Amodu’s tutelage. Yes, he qualified the team for the world cup but it must be said that the Super Eagles under Amodu were like a bunch of school boys who grinded out results more out of determination than from any noticeable input from the bench. On the last day of qualification for the world cup, the Eagles needed Mozambique to do them a favour against Tunisia. The Eagles were a team who appeared almost bereft of ideas on the pitch. Saddling Amodu with the task of calling the shots from the bench at the world cup would have amounted to a monumental disaster for our campaign in South Africa. And that is putting it mildly.

Hear Amodu in an interview with football365.co.za on Eagles’ new manager, Swedish Lars Lagerback: “ I don’t see any new thing he would bring to the team. We are talking of a team that is already cooked and trimmed for success by previous handlers…the boys are capable of holding their own against any opposition. The team from where I left off is very easy to handle at the moment”. Pray, which team was Amodu referring to here? Was it the same team he once famously called ‘average’ midway through the AFCON and world cup qualifiers? Was it the same team that couldn’t carve out clear cut goal scoring chances in a nations’ cup game against Zambia? Could the Edo born coach be referring to a team without a creative hub and loaded to the brim with defensive midfielders?

Amodu must have been suffering from a delusion of grandeur if, for a single moment, he thought he was destined to take the Eagles to the world cup with his approach to the beautiful game. Win or lose, Nigerians love their teams to put on a show—entertain and play with a swagger. It is not for nothing that we were called the ‘Brazil’ of Africa. We loved our own ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha because he could create goals as well as do unbelievable things with the ball.  Kanu Nwankwo is revered in these parts because even though he is unbelievably goal shy, he makes his fans applaud his dexterity and deft touches on the ball. Amodu’s philosophy of just being ‘efficient’ was alien to these parts. Which explains why, in spite of meeting his Semi Final target at the Nations’ Cup, the calls for his sack reached deafening proportions across the country. Surely, he should have known that the axe was within striking distance.

Amodu wasn’t done with his vituperations against his successor: “sincerely speaking, Lagerback may just be holidaying around the team. He is new, so everyone seems to believe he is the messiah they have been waiting for….” Thanks Amodu for reminding us Lagerback would not be the messiah, but he offers better developmental prospects for our game than you could have ever managed. His early days on the job indicate that he is knowledgeable about the task ahead and is clear on how to go about achieving same. He is analytical and intelligent and is not one to talk too much about his capabilities; preferring to let his work do the talking—a stark contrast to you, who goes about telling everyone you are the best in the land and in the world going by your records. It’s time, Sir, you got a life!

Whatever happened to the good old professional values, where coaches and sportsmen alike vowed to support the man at the helm in the interest of all? Why is Shuaibu Amodu willing to tear down a team preparing for a major tournament before the first ball is kicked in anger? He admits the Football Federation treated him unfairly, a grouse this writer shares with him. That should take nothing away from the fact that he lacks the knowledge and depth of the game—those intricate and nuanced approach to a game that has become too tactical and technical at the highest level and for whom the likes of Amodu and his coterie of indigenous local champions must come to grasp with quickly before the game passes them by.

Football at the administrative level in Nigeria is still everything but tidy. The biggest factor militating against the development of the game is the lack of a proper structure from the grassroots. No coach should be held responsible for this. But when you have an assemblage of foreign professionals under one roof to tinker, make selections and fashion out winning formulae taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of individual players, you should do better, definitely. Amodu’s greatest undoing in his stints as Eagles manager has been his arrogance and obdurate nature. He was a ‘My- way- or- the- Highway’ fellow set in his own outdated ways. He was an accident waiting to happen.

Nigerians love the game and need to make an impression in the first global football showpiece to be staged on African soil. They would hate to watch their Eagles with a fat and tactless Aiyegbeni upfront who will flunk chance after chance of putting the ball at the back of the net. They would loathe watching a team without a creative midfielder and one with centre backs and strikers straight from the treatment tables and understandably off form. What a sight it would be to watch our team being torn to shreds by technically superior teams at the world cup!

Amodu’s departure was inevitable against the backdrop highlighted in this piece and was in the best interest of the nation. He should take an undignified silence; go back to hone his skills, prove himself at international level with the home based Eagles or the U-23 team or some other national team and return to stake a claim to the country’s top football job. Until then, he and his sympathizers should throw their weight behind Lagerback to ensure the Eagles return to the pinnacle of world football beginning with this year’s mundial. Court cases and tirades are not the way to go.

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