The turbulent waters that have kept troubling the Nigerian football scene do not pretend to abate any time soon, and as usual, scapegoats are always created and the real issues swept under the carpet. Eventually, Samson Siasia had to go, if not for his inability to lead Nigeria to the 2012 African Nations Cup, then for his arrogance and pomposity in dealing with the press, administrators and the players. But it does not solve the conundrum of Nigerian football decline; it does not even adduce reasons as to the demise of our soccer culture. It merely laid a temporary blame at the feet of Siasia and the wide vacuum that used to be Nigerian football glory remains unexplained and unfilled. The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) recently appointed Stephen Keshi as Siasia's successor, making this the 38th time the country would be engaging in coach-changing activities since independence, and more worrisome is that this is the 10th time in many years. Keshi is the 13th indigenous coach to handle the Super Eagles.All is surely not well with Nigerian football, and more troubling is the inability of our administrators to clearly identify and address the challenges facing the team. Our senior team has lately been receiving whipping everywhere on the continent; from Addis-Ababa to Accra, Conakry to Freetown, Monrovia to Luanda and even in Niamey, the 'Super' Eagles are being given serious football lessons by teams with players who still have giant-sized pictures of Austin Okocha in their bedrooms. At this moment, Seychelles and Comoros Island would seriously fancy their chances at scalping the Eagles over two legs.It is almost impossible to believe the problem with Nigerian football can be solved by a mere coach-swop as the NFF would want us to believe. Interestingly, all coaches of Nigerian descent collectively have amassed 0 (zero) major trophies at the senior level (where there is no room for age-cheats). So basically, they are all one and the same in achievement and statistically have little separating them, since the most important statistic (trophies) is null for all. The three major issues I believe represent the root cause of our problems are the lack of talented and committed players, a poor league system, as well as selfish unpatriotic football administrators.Nigeria does not currently possess the caliber of players required to bring her back to her glorious days of African dominance. Right from the attackline to the defence, there is almost no player that feels proud wearing that Green/White jersey anymore. All we have are overpaid footballers who believe they are doing Nigeria a favour by featuring for the National team. Currently, no Nigerian player is worthy of winning the African Player Award, and sadly, none has won it since Nwankwo Kanu in 1999! And as long as we still keep producing players like 'Stanley Okoro a.k.a little-messi' and Chrisanthus Macaulay in our heavily-over-aged youth teams, the future would remain bleak. Nigeria does not have quality players in Europe anymore and I stand corrected. Gone are the days when you could count six or seven Nigerian players in Africa's top eleven, but today, you cannot confidently point at one Nigerian that would win a place in that team! We need a new set of players, and to achieve this, we need to reform the grassroot football system. There must be massive investment in football academies in this country. Former French International Defender, Marcel Desailly, returned to build a state-of-the-art soccer facility in his native Ghana. On the other hand, our players return to Nigeria to erect night-clubs/beer-parlours and become sports-analysts. There is also the need to harness talents from our local league, but how can you achieve this when the league is itself in a state of quagmire' The current NPL season is arguably the longest ever witnessed in football after almost 14 months. The league ran for eight months without a chairman and a sponsor, leaving the eventual winners of this season with just handshakes for their efforts, and yet, we wonder why Nigerian teams never do well at continental tourneys' Siasia took a senior national team wholly made up of local based players to the WAFU cup earlier in the year and lost the finals to Togo in Abeokuta. Afterwards, he developed a phobia for using local players, and he hardly visited league venues, thereby contributing to the dearth of the local league. I still insist that Keshi needs to build his team around our local players and get to know the league.There has to be a total overhaul of those unpatriotic demagogues parading themselves as sports administrators in the NFF. It is time the statute setting up the NFA is reviewed to ensure only individuals who have ample experience in football administration and have proven themselves overtime, are allowed to get into the board. The journey back to redemption is long and hard, but the good news is that it is attainable if only we start now!'Sylvester wrote in from 12 Jida Road, Agbara, Ogun State.
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