There is a popular saying that ‘he who fails to plan, plans to fail’. We have failed to sustain success in Nigerian football because we have failed to put in place structures that will guarantee consistent good results.
It must be noted that there was a time when featuring in AFCON was deemed Nigeria’s birth right. Those were days when even if we didn’t win, we will still come back with our ‘golden bronze’. But the fact is that there was hardly any AFCON without the green and white flag being hoisted.
Now, Nigeria has qualified for only one of the last three editions (AFCON 2015 inclusive). We missed out on the 2012 edition; won in 2013 and failed to qualify for 2015. So at one point, we will be way up there on the mountain, the next minute, we are deeper in the valley. Last year was such a glorious one. Beginning with the AFCON victory and ending with the U-17 World Cup triumph.
Then this year began with the home-based Eagles winning bronze at CHAN, then a second round outing at the World Cup, a silver at the FIFA Women’s U-20 World Cup before Eagles failed to pick an AFCON ticket. That’s what you get when those who should evolve policies to drive a system forward fail to do the needful.
What is our football policy? Is there a peculiarity in the way our national teams play? If yes, have we really taken note of it? This is one task the technical committee of the NFF has consistently failed to address. I even did a study on the Nigerian pattern of play which was captured in my book ‘Bakoka: From Atlanta with Football made in Nigeria’. The NFF was represented at the pubic presentation of that book and took away 10 copies. I wonder what they did with them. In more serious climes, that book would have been a wake-up call. I would have been invited to throw more light on some technical issues raised in the book, no matter how stupid they seemed. I did not expect that my postulations will be taken hook, lime and sinker. I did not insist that we stuck with Bakoka, the name I gave to the Nigerian pattern. But I expected the NFF Technical Committee to have looked at that book critically. What was the reason for taking away those copies if the issues raised therein were not addressed? Did I just do a book that somebody will dump in his library? No…no….no…
That book was a result of a 14 year study of the Nigerian pattern of play and I expected it to be taken more seriously. But I was deluded. Instead of dealing with the salient technical issues raised in the book, you would see the technical committee members scrambling to be on the trip to the national teams’ foreign engagements. They would want these teams to excel because that will guarantee more of such trips but wouldn’t take into cognizance the technical components of the teams. I expect the national teams to be reviewed technically after every tournament but, instead, they are judged by the results they turn in. Nobody bothers how those results are attained.
The result is the haphazard way our national teams play. Every national team coach sticks to his personal philosophy. So you have a Manu Garba who will want his team to attack, attack and attack in what he calls ‘tiki taka’ while a Stephen Keshi wouldn’t be perturbed if there was no creative midfielder in his team. So in a particular Nigerian national team you see flare as the boys enjoy more possession while in the other, the players can’t even put five passes together. The latter was the hallmark of the latter day Keshi Eagles. Garba will easily identify with ‘tiki taka’ the new name for the total football that was invented by Johan Cryuff and Rinus Michels, his coach at Ajax, in 1968 because he is unaware of any pattern his country (Nigeria) is noted for. He is not also aware of any name tied to such a pattern if it really exists. So he now borrowed ‘tiki taka’ from Barcelona and the Dutch national team. I once discussed this issue with a former national team chief coach who dismissed it with a wave of the hand. In his opinion, there is no such thing as Nigerian pattern of play. In his words, “I just file out my team according to the opposition and the players I have available”. You wouldn’t blame him when the technical committee he should be answerable to has not provided the requisite template. This coach therefore invites players to camp not taking into cognizance the nation’s football culture. If a coach knows how he is expected to play, he goes scouting for the talents with the necessary ingredients to actualize that. It was this failure to pay attention to details that was responsible for Keshi listing four midfielders for the World Cup, all defensive. If he knew how important the number 10 is in the Nigerian game, he wouldn’t have gone to the World Cup with no recourse to the creative midfield department.
But in reality, there is a pattern peculiar to Nigeria. This was brought to my cognizance by then Spanish national team coach Javier Clemente prior to France 98. With Spain drawn in the same group as Nigeria, Clemente had confessed that after studying tapes of the Nigerian team (at Atlanta), he had failed to find an antidote to their ‘very slow but effective brand of football’. The Eagles will go ahead to beat Spain 3-2 at the World Cup but Clemente had awakened my consciousness.
The words ‘slow’ and ‘effective’ reverberated. I, therefore, used the Atlanta team as a case study to analyze the Nigerian game. It was the team’s very slow attacking build-up and pacy wingers and full backs that were responsible for the team coming from behind to beat Brazil and Argentina. Atlanta 96 was our biggest moment in football and put the Nigerian pattern on the front burner. So while we were even unaware of the peculiarity of what we had, the world was working at finding ‘an antidote’ to the Nigerian game. I think they succeeded because subsequently the golden generation of Nigerian football won nothing. Before every match, our opponents will study the Atlanta clips and demobilize Nwankwo Kanu and Austin Okocha.
Brazil invented the ‘tip tap’ or what is called jogo bonito and won the World Cup thrice between 1958 and 1970 but when the whole world caught up with the pattern, they had barren spells in five World Cups. A review of the Brazilian brand prior to USA 94 saw the introduction of more steel into the hitherto elastic Brazilian pattern hence the presence of defensive midfield duo of Carlos Dunga and Mazinho to shield a back four. This led to World Cup victory in 1994 and 2002 and silver in 1998. We need to institutionalize our pattern of play. We should periodically review this module to accommodate modern trends. This is a task before the new NFF Technical Committee. Until we do the needful, we will keep moving back and front; forward without motion.
Nwankpa, a journalist and author of the book ‘Bakoka: From Atlanta with Football made in Nigeria’, lives in Abuja.
