Onochie Anibeze
13 February 2002
FOR hours Stephen Keshi, Joe Erico and Amodu Shaibu were speechless after Senegal sent Nigeria out of the just concluded Nations Cup.
They could not fathom why the team fumbled. From their last group match against Liberia to the quarter-final match against Ghana , they had tried to change certain things in the character of the team. But the team performed below expectation and that is still a shock to the coaches and players.
"The spirit was too low. I really don t know why but the spirit was too low for my liking," Keshi tried to recall the mood of the players before and during the match against Senegal.
"The day was just different. In the bus, on our way to the stadium, the boys could not sing. Any song started died few seconds after it was started. I tried to push the players. I tried to psyche them up. I m no longer a player and shouldn t be doing all that but the players were too quiet and I was wondering what was going on. They were not charged up and it showed when the game started. Our dressing room was quiet too. The players were calm, not the way I expected a team going into a battle. At half time, I told them that playing against 10 players could be deceptive and that they should go all out and also be very careful because the referee might want to make up for the early red card given to Senegal. I think that it was generally a bad day for us all. Sometimes, it happens like that in football. Look at the Okocha free-kick, then the penalty, all hitting the post. But what worried me more was their low spirit. You don t win matches with the kind of mood I saw them in," Keshi said.
This probably accounted for their argument that sports ministry s Pat Ekeji should share in the blame.
Ekeji had told the players that they could take the next available flight out of Mali if they were not ready to accept the ministry s terms as regards payment of some of their entitlements. The sports ministry director had also condemned their play against Ghana and even faced a shouting match with Coach Amodu Shaibu whom he threatened not to pay his match bonus against Ghana because of Eagles "lousy game."
The relationship between the team and Ekeji became so strained that the players asked him to stay away from them, saying that his presence was even affecting their concentration. And when they lost to Senegal, Keshi maintained that Ekeji s actions affected team spirit. But he did not spare the players for disappointing only that he would not agree to single out any person.
"Collectively, they didn t play well. It was disappointing. We ll all learn from this."(ACONS)
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