Confederations Cup: Lessons We’ll refuse to learn

It is not too hard to see what is amiss and a few simple questions will be illuminating. Even beyond the last Confederations Cup, have we ever bothered to find out how the football super-powers like Brazil, Italy, Germany, Argentina, and more recently, Spain, attained their elite status? If you like, you may even include other World Cup winners too, less distinguished though they may be, like Uruguay, England, and France. Where do we want our football to be, say, in the next five years, and then in ten years’ time, etc., not just by wishful thinking but as a result of careful analysis of what we have and what we must do to get to each milestone, backed by adequate follow-through?

Argentina, like Brazil, have not only developed a football culture of captivating teamwork, but have also the distinction of regularly producing individuals that have been serious contenders for the title of best player ever: Alfredo di Stefano in the ‘50s, Diego Maradona in the ‘80s, Lionel Messi in contemporary times! Does common sense not tell us that apart from having endowed players as we also have, each of these countries must be doing something that we are not doing?

When the NFA was set up in 1933 (not 1945 as generally believed), its focus was on developing the game as an amateur sport. But global trends which are in tandem with expectations of the public dictate that participation mainly to enhance amity and universal brotherhood is not enough. Teams want to play according to the rules and win! And true professionalism in the character of teams as well as administration of the sport is the answer. Unfortunately, the countless boards we have had in eighty years have just carried on from day to day, and from competition to competition.

Whenever we do not win a match we descend on the technical crew by doubting their technical competence and trying to find fault with their team list. Everyone, from the head of the occupants of the Glasshouse to the ordinary fan out there, would then produce a list of his own that ‘would have produced a better result’. In extreme cases there would be a change of guard with the employment of a new gaffer. It has been the same story since we had the‘UK Tourists’ in 1949. We have had coaches from most parts of the world including the Middle East. We have used players of every description: ‘local amateur’; ‘home-based pro’; ‘foreign-based pro’. But to what avail?

If only we would learn we would see from the special relationship ‘Father Tiko’/Otto Gloria and Clemens Westerhof had with the authorities that enabled them to produce teams that could almost touch the sky in the late ‘70s to ’80 and ’94, respectively, that we had the potential to even do more if we had early and better attention. And the relatively easy access to home-based players for extensive training programs and team-building exercises as we did in the golden eras of our football makes it reasonable for them to form the core of the national team now.But it still amounts to taking short-term palliative measures that paper over the cracks while ignoring the fact that the real fault lies in the foundation.

As I have tried to point out over the years, what each football giant has done is to determine the playing style that suits it best and put in place the infrastructure to nurture its players in that style from their formative years. I use the word ‘nurture’ instructively. For the avoidance of doubt, resources in every country are limited. What progressive countries do is to identify what they really need and prioritise. And if you want to excel, you cannot compromise on facilities and professional personnel that will get the job done. Let me reiterate that it is foolish and unacceptable to retain personal assistants to the head of a body that is even illegal, but sack the team’s psychologist and the chief coach’s technical assistant ostensibly because there is ‘no money’.

It has probably not occurred to us that our habitual haphazardness does not address our challenges. Rather, it usually only creates more serious ones. Let us take a look at football academies, for instance. Without any regulatory mechanism, the fact that they are in great demand has only led to a free-for-all among many opportunistic businessmen in Nigeria. There are no rules establishing minimum standards not to talk of their enforcement. None of them has the imperative full complement of well-trained professional staff like Grade ‘A’ coaches, psychologists, nutritionists, etc. What is the arrangement for regular academic education of the young players? And if some of them would play for professional clubs and possibly represent Nigeria, in what predetermined style are they being trained? The sad irony is that if the present state of affairs persists, our football academies may only compound our football inadequacies. Similar considerations apply to our so-called professional clubs and their feeder teams (where they exist) more than twenty years after our football became a professional sport.

If we were better organised, we could use football academies/feeder teams to start preparing professional players for life after retirement by educating them on investment practices, money management, disability/health insurance, and the need to learn alternative job skills thereby possibly eliminating frequently reported cases of penury and severe hardship in later years. In many cases, they may be the sole breadwinners of their entire respective families. No matter how high their income may be, the strain on their resources may be enormous to say the least. In other cases, they may just be profligate, not being wise to the reality that they may not command very high income sooner than later.

How regrettable that we are unwilling to learn from the lessons of history! And the immortal words of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) are so apt. On 18 December, 1831, he wrote, ‘If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!’