For What Now?
ONE way of knowing that a friend of mine is sad, saddened and struggling with a situation is when he keeps repeating, “For what now?”. I have long learnt not to ask him what is wrong.
In that situation, questions frustrate him. The only words that do not desert him are “For what now?” I pity him. As I write this, he is not only on nodding terms with everyone.
On Saturday, the Super Eagles speared homes with the sort of performance that got my friend in the wrong mood. Families are in suspense after their pathetic 2-0 loss to South Africa in a 2019 Africa Nations Cup qualifier.
Wives are approaching their husbands with trepidation. Requests that were warehoused, expecting the Super Eagles would put dads in giving mode are rescheduled. Dads are unnecessarily angry though most wives have been through this phase several times.
The patriotism Nigerian deploy to supporting their national team, football mostly, is lost on the administrators who are after improving their CVs.
However, I blame the players. They are pseudo professionals. How can people who earn a living from football, abroad, play the way they did? They had no pride. They came for a stroll in the park.
My colleagues in the sports media had the three points counted. Experience, they relied on, never beaten by South Africa in a competitive game, is a bad teacher, it limits efforts, it create a huge sense of entitlement.
Did we ever think we would keep beating South Africa? We were lucky, it would have been four goals, possibly more. I hope we learnt some lessons.
The chief lesson is that the Super Eagles should be competitive. If a player plies his trade (as my colleagues tritely craft) for The Unbeatables, in my native Omoba, and does it well, give him a shirt. This would mean more work, scouting for the players, which our foreign and urban based coaches are abhor.
We should stop awarding team places to players for considerations other than performance. We would have had a better team if the players earned their places.
We are in a precarious position. All the celebrations about being in a weak group has disappeared. The emphatic victory of Libya, 5-1 over Seychelles and South Africa’s win that drained the Eagles’ confidence, are new mountains for a team that has had peripatetic flights for years.
What will happen in August when the Eagles take on Cameroun in a 2018 World Cup qualifier? Or when the Nations Cup 2019 qualifiers resume in March?
The coach has to earn his pay for once by finding players who are hungry for victories. They are all over the place, waiting for a call up, which is possible if the coach is dedicated to tinkering a winning team.
Where I am from, we posit that when there is nowhere else to place the hand, we opt for the knee. I have heard some blame the choice of Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo, as match venue, for the loss.
Such sentiments are frightening. The Uyo facility has the best pitch in Nigeria. It was packed with spectators who produced a carnival atmosphere, waiting for the Eagles to accentuate the celebrations.
Too many excuses are popping up, ways of telling us that nothing really went wrong in Uyo and that there could be more days of, “For what now?,” from my friend.
A minor consolation though: not winning returns us quickly to whining about Nigeria. Our country needs to be rescued on several fronts.
