The foreign coach distraction
By Dele Akinola
DESERT Warriors, Algeria 5; Green Eagles, Nigeria 1! That was the comprehensively humiliating result of the opening match of the l990 African Nations Cup in Algiers. The Nigerian team, under the tutelage of Dutchman, Clemens Westerhof, was thoroughly outplayed, comprehensively outclassed and decisively outscored. That was one of the "high" points of this foreign coach whose much-talked-about achievements - winning the 1994 Nations Cup, qualifying for and posting an impressive performance at same year's World Cup - came only in the "injury time" of his five-year reign as commander-in-chief of the Nigerian national team.
If that disgraceful show had been put up with an indigenous coach in charge, under whatever excuse, he probably would have had to immediately seek asylum in or around the desert nation. But the self-styled Dutch-gerian who too often had been assessed in comparison with Nigerian coaches on a grossly non-level playing field, not only survived but actually reigned for another four years. In fact, he was canonized until he felt compelled to sack himself
Over a period of about three decades that I have been following Nigerian football with a nose for informed, even if Eagletic analysis, a number of indigenous coaches have at one time or another, handled the national team. They include, among others, Paul Hamilton, Adegboye Onigbinde, Christian Chukwu, Austin Eguavoen and the incumbent, Shuaibu Amodu. Never, within the period, did the Eagles, under any of these coaches, post a calamitous result of the Algiers '90 magnitude in a competitive match of significance.
The Dutchman won the Nations Cup for Nigeria only on his third consecutive attempt. No Nigerian coach has had the luxury of more than one attempt. On Westerhof's second attempt at Senegal '92, he won a bronze medal; he had red carpet laid for him at Aso Rock, given national honour and, wait for it, his failed Green Eagles team was rechristened "Super." Then Vice President, Augustus Aikhomu even lampooned the Nigerian press for being so "unpatriotic" to find fault with Westerhof. Amodu, Chukwu and Eguavoen all won the same bronze medal on only their first attempts; they were cursed, abused and humiliated.
Eguavoen, in his full charge of the Super Eagles, accomplished an intimidating competitive match record of eight wins, one draw and only one loss to the star-studded, world-class Ivorien team at CAN 2006, yet he was humiliated. He lost a mere friendly match against Ghana in London and all hell was let loose. Serbian Bora Milutinovic's Eagles team, on the way to France '98, was scandalously beaten 5-1 by the Netherlands and 3-0 by the disintegrating Yugoslavia in friendly matches, yet he remained a hero. The white man can never be wrong; the local coach can never be right! Imagine the shame of a nation.
It seems convincing beyond all reasonable and unreasonable doubts, therefore, that only the colour of the skin of the local coach constitutes his own cross of crucifixion at Golgotha. That is why the avoidable distraction, occasioned by the recent curious and amusing outbreak of foreign-coach-mania in our football discourse, even in high places, could find the fertile ground to foul the atmosphere when all hands should be on deck towards consolidating our gains so far.
The prevailing problem with Nigerian football, manifesting in dwindling performance and results, had its genesis in 2002 when Amodu and his team were unjustly but characteristically, disgraced just because they failed to win that year's Nations Cup. By practically preventing them from going on to correct their mistakes en-route the World Cup, for which they had laboured to qualify in spite of Westerhof's compatriot, Bonfrere Jo, the continuity was broken. And, not surprisingly, we posted our worst performance ever at the global show.
In our quest to excel at the 2010 continental and global shows, this definitely is not the time to lose concentration by means of any such avoidable distraction. The foreign coach rub-a-dub music is one big distraction capable of rubbing blinding pepper in our eyes only for them to open after we have again returned to square zero. The 1992 Nations Cup in Senegal was won by Cote d'Ivoire with a set of average but committed players under one "ordinary, bloody" local coach called Yeo Marshial. There were at least half a dozen "hot" foreign coaches, including Nigeria's Westerhof, in that competition.
Let Guus Hiddink, Trapatoni, van Gaal, Maurinho, Ferguson, Ancelloti, Terim and co stay back at their bases. If all stakeholders here - administrators, coaches, the media, analysts, supporters and especially the players get possessed of the right attitude and accord national interest the position of primacy, we can very well do without those "messiahs." Berti Vogts, world and European champion as player and as coach, was here!
