Mark still sad over Eagles' defeat

SENATE President, David Mark, expressed shock at the performance of the Super Eagles at the Africa Nations Cup qualifier against Guinea in Abuja at the weekend, expressing displeasure that the team lost the chance to pick a slot for the tourney.Mark, who led the Federal Government's delegation to the Abuja National Stadium to support the Eagles, watched helplessly as the team crashed, stating that he had earlier expressed anxiety over the team to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).According to the Senate president, who spoke at the flagging-off ceremony of hisfootball talent hunt programme in Oturkpo, Benue State, the antidote to the declining fortune of Nigeria football would be a complete return to the grassroots to discover young players. He emphasised that Nigeria needed to build football teams from the grassroots and keep them together.'What we saw on Saturday was a national embarrassment,' he lamented. 'National pride was at stake and our boys did not put in their best. They did not understand the importance of the game to the nation, they failed us.'However, he urged Nigerians to put the sad experience behind them just as he called on the NFF to put its house in order. According to him, part of the measures to correct the ugly situation would be to shop for talents at the grassroots. He further cautioned football managers against politicising the game, stressing that selection of players must always be on merit and not sentiment.'One of the lessons from Saturday's woeful outing is that we must learn to catch them young and keep them together. We must learn to plan ahead because any nation that fails to plan, plans to fail. We can avoid failure if we plan ahead,' he said.
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