Scratching The Surface …Of Siasia’ Sack, Keshi’s Fresh Choice

It is like a circus show. One moment the coach of the Nigerian National soccer team, the Super Eagles is sacked, another moment another is named. And for every failure the choice begins for another potential failure dressed early for the hangman’s noose. This in short, has been, in the past many years, the politics of football management in the land.
It was the turn of Samson Siasia last weekend, to bow out having been forced out for being a disgrace for soccer in Nigeria. His offence, failing to qualify the Super Eagles for next year’s African Nation’s Cup in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, the first time in 25 years a National team manager would fail that woefully.
Therefore, and in line with the contract with his employers, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), wasted no time  in endorsing his disgraceful exit. Siasia has since been replaced by Stephen Keshi, himself an ex-Nigerian International and Captain of the Super Eagles for a long period. According to the immediate past Super Eagles Captain, Kanu Nwankwo, being a former national skipper with a lot of international exposure, Keshi should be able to bring his experience to bear for the good of the Eagles.
Interestingly, Stephen Keshi’s high coaching pedigree was well-known before the NFF chose Siasia. The new national team manager, NFF like Kanu will readily tell those who care to listen,  it was who qualified Togo, a tiny African country with poor soccer history, to the last World Cup, and could very easily do better managing the Super Eagles. That, they knew, but preferred Samson Siasia who apart from grooming female internationals abroad, had managed the Flying Eagles to second best position in the world.
As always, what a national coach achieved while on the job is hardly the issue. What is, is indeed his failure to deliver when it counts, in the case of Siasia, failing to have the Nigerian Green White Green flag hoisted during the next Nation’s Cup, after drawing 2-2 with Guinea, October 9, this year.
None should envy Keshi. I wouldn’t because should the unlikely happen, just as coach Christian Chukwu, sat in judgment against Siasia, the former’s successor, Siasia may, if politics of NFF is any lead to go by, also determine Keshi’s fate, some day. All these are merely scratching the surface.
How many have bothered to reason that it required more than a coach to win a soccer encounter? How many still remember that Jose Morinho, the manager of Spanish Laliga clubside Real Madrid, twice voted, coach of the year, had his team beaten 5-0 by rivals FC. Barcelona last year? It meant that even Mourinho, the special one, can fail when it mattered the most, because there’s only so much a coach can achieve without a purposeful, united, talented, dutiful and most importantly mentally, physically and psychologically stable crop of footballers playing together as a team. Even so, such a crop must play to instruction without which even the best coach can do nothing after the allowed substitutions at regulation time.
So, in what way did the players contribute to Siasia’s fall? Could Siasia’s fall be avoided? How? In the likelihood of a repeat under Keshi’s watch? How? Why? These are questions which answers, I dare warn, would be provided even before the next World Cup.
Bottomline? The problem of soccer in Nigeria is not solely that of the Technical Manager. It is instead, a list of variables like poor administration, proud, insolent, less patriotic players, over meddlesomeness by soccer administrators in the choice of first team members, avoidable rivalry among players, lack of respect for the national team coach and most importantly lobsided loyalty of players to professional clubsides, rather than to country. In addition to all these, an even more dangerous variable is indiscipline among supposed star players, and the tendency among Nigerians to clamour for finished goods rather than look inwards.
When last for instance, did a Nigerian National coach watch secondary school football? Some of Nigeria’s most celebrated ex-internationals were sourced there. Finidi George and Richard Owubokiri are classic examples. Owubokiri for instance, was in his fourth year in Okrika Grammar School when he was discovered during a secondary school soccer championship  then called John Chidiac Cup before, he was later conscripted into the Sharks Football Club. And then the Green Eagles.
Those were years when the Nigeria Division One league was a delight to watch and the best of Nigerian soccer made the national team. What is the state of the premier league today? Encumbered by politics and near endless litigations, the league was, for a long time, postponed, resuming only recently, for reasons that cannot even be contemplated in Europe.
Today, virtually every soccer enthusiast in Nigeria belongs to a fan club of one Spanish, Italian or English Premiership clubside and proud to wear their favoured clubs’ colours, even to Sunday service. Which way Nigeria?
With that setting, a Nigeria national team coach, cannot be depended upon to risk his career looking inwards but would rather postract, if need be, to the super rich and influential crop of Nigeria footballers based in Europe. Infact, to earn their support, not necessarily respect, he must play the chicken-hearted father-figure without the liver to whip into line, recalcitrant players. For if he dares, he would not have learnt anything from Siasia’s woes. After his failure is Vincent Enyeama not back to the fold?
This is because, as far as Nigerian football is concerned, the team must just win, even if it means the coach forfeiting part of his monthly N5 million earnings to please the already rich players, to avoid failure. That being the bottomline, the coach no longer enjoys the right of a final say on his team formation and tactics, but must bear the brunt of failure, when, all goes awry.
Even more disturbing is the ritual of choosing a National coach. So political now, coaches are today chosen in Nigeria, not strictly, by a dependable technical crop that should know, but  based on public opinion, an informal general election of sorts, in which the loudest of voices determine the eventual choice of a coach. That, in short, was how Keshi was chosen and certainly not because of any upward review of his coaching pedigree after the success of Togo, an achievement which failed to stop Siasia’s choice.
No doubt, Keshi is a good coach of national and international repute, but what happens if, like Siasia, he fails to deliver? Another sack? Next time Oliseh or Amokachi?
This is not how soccer administration should be. In a game of soccer, stability is key. Let coaches be signed based on a tenure, even though tied to certain specific competitions. Failure to win should not be enough reason to punish a coach unless, such failure was criminally contrived to fix a match.
Instead, our coaches should be encouraged to learn from their tactical errors. Simply, rather than see every defeat of the national soccer teams as failures on the part of coaches, the NFF, Nigerians and coaches themselves should see such failures as fresh knowledge about how not to win a soccer encounter.
The problem is not entirely the coaches’ but all Nigerians, particularly the NFF which now changes coaches as often as a wealthy kid changes toys. It should not be so. To attract international sponsors or even world class technical hands, stability is important and without it no sane mind would risk his or her reputation in the name of being national team coach.
Therefore, Keshi should be given a free hand and be empowered to instill discipline and patriotism among team members. In course of doing so, he should be protected from any gang-up against influential players as was the fate with Siasia.
But wait! What happens to the national team players who said “they could not win the Guinea National team in Abuja because of a T.B. Joshua prediction that the Super Eagles would lose by a lone goal? If nothing, then the national team may have to consider for immediate employment into the technical crew, a native doctor, a prophet or a spiritualist to counter such predictions in the future for super-natural fortification. Otherwise, how can a professional footballer like Osaze Odemwinge claim that T.B. Joshua’s prediction of imminent defeat affected them, and for which they had to contract another spiritualist, who eventually failed to counter T. B. Joshua’s prophecy.
Should the NFF blame Siasia alone for that naivity? What happened if Keshi faces same prediction? See Joshua for atonement? May be or lose and go the way of Siasia
My Agony is that Siasia’s replacement will not be the last, it is merely a fulfilment of expectations, key to the success of the circus show, which Nigeria soccer management has become.
But luck, we must wish Keshi. He’ll need it in good measure.

Soye Wilson Jamabo