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10/10/2016

GOLDEN BOYS GIVE US SOMETHING TO HOPE FOR


Three years ago, the late Stephen Keshi led the super eagles to glory at the CAF championship held in South Africa and many expected that to be the start of a new dawn in Nigerian soccer, too long had we been made to seat at the corner while "inferior" sides dominated the continent, this feat was suppose to usher in a new phase in Nigerian football but what came after was cataclysm in it's purest form. We went through numerous managerial changes in which two of them died and one gloriously fell out with the Nigerian FA, our best striker prematurely retired from the National team, and worst of all, we  missed out on a world cup and Afcon finals. We found ourselves at the wrong end of the fifa rankings by 2015, The Giants of Africa were rated as the
11th best football nation in Africa and 66th in the world. The NFF didn’t do much to allay the worries of the Nigerian public either as there was political turmoil within the footballing body, not to mention the suspended FIFA ban that would have occurred as the country’s football governing body were contemplating taking football related issues to the High court, Nigerian football as a whole was on a downward spiral and there was really no sign of hope and we seemed doomed to spend another couple of years in obscurity.

Personally, I think football(sports as a whole) should be kept in a different planet from politics but that’s just a pipe dream, the grueling reality is that Politics cuts across every facet of life and giving it a blind eye is at one’s detriment. The past year has seen Nigeria embroiled in various Political and Economic crisis, from the change in government to the on-going self inflicted recession, insurgency and all that have no doubt had an adverse effect on the Country’s sport funding, the events at the recent Olympics where the Dream Team VI were stranded at Atlanta and only arrived at Brazil a mere hours before kick-off and admirably ended up with Nigeria’s only medal(Bronze) of the Olympics. Even the most ardent optimist would be gloom if he were a Nigerian supporter, forgive my french but we’ve been through so much shit, it absolutely stinks, but alas, there is some gleamer of hope and it rests on the shoulders of our new Golden generation.

The truth is, we are currently better equipped than we’ve ever been since the last golden generation brought home old in Atlanta 96, and rather than dwelling on our past failures, fans, management and coaches should begin to look forward and realize the potential that’s within the current crop of players. From the back to the front, we’re ably represented and without taking anything away from the whole squad, the Golden boy Nominees have to be singled out as they represent the present and future of Nigerian football. One plies his trade at Manchester City and has largely played second fiddle to Aguero(who wouldn’t) but has taken his chances every time he’s been called upon while the other is the nephew of Jay-Jay Okocha, an  Arsenal Academy graduate who broke into the first team at the middle of last season and grown from strength to strength, if you’ve been living under a rock the past year, I’m talking about Kelechi Iheanacho and Alexander Iwobi.
Kelechi(left) Ighalo(middle) Iwobi(right)

Every time I watch their respective clubs play, I always fantasise about how their link up would be in the international setup, would the coach be able to et the best out of them? Would they just form a golden boy link up like the one Neymar has with Gabriel Jesus, would they bring that quality we’ve been desperately lacking in attack? These questions and more will be answered in due time and with both of them on the score sheet the first time they both start with each other, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t dream. We have potential world beaters playing for us, we have that little bit of stardust that’s been missing for some time.


It would be utterly fallacious of me to assure you of a new dawn in Nigerian football as a whole; our performance under Rohr against Zambia wasn’t reassuring and we rode our luck for long swats of the game and have the golden boys to thank for picking their moments and giving the Eagles a two goal lead. Obviously, two new trees don’t make a forest(maybe a tiny new garden) but what we have on our hands is the potential of seeing two prodigious talents from our country go on to have successful careers in World football and rub some of that goodness on us. In the times we find ourselves in, anything would do and qualifying for Russia 2018 would do just fine.

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