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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