Tempo (Lagos)
28 February 2002
Shuaibu Amodu, National Soccer Team Coach, His Assistants And the Soulless Team They Took to Mali 2002 Were Sacked for Underachieving, Segun Ajiboye Reports.
With the sack of the coaching crew and the disbandment of the national team, the Super Eagles, this week by the Sports Minister, the Super Eagles, which has been groping under the weight of indiscipline by both officials and players may have started on a path of redemption.
Minister of Sports, Ishaya Mark Aku, against his pre-Nations Cup promises of sticking to Amodu and his team, in a press statement on Monday, in Abuja, announced the sack of Amodu and his lieutenants and the disbandment of the team. The minister listed, among other sins, the failure of the team to reach the final of the just concluded Nations Cup in Mali and Amodu's loss of control over the team, leading to displays of indiscipline by players. The result was a sharply divided camp during the just concluded tournament.
The seeds of the fiasco in Mali were sown from the time the team was called to camp. In accordance with the tradition, locally-based players were the first to report to camp. Players who were invited from clubsides in Europe arrived the camp late. With the exception of three foreign-based players, the rest who were already in the country for the Xmas break only started arriving the camp three days before the team's departure to Mali.
The late arrival in camp, naturally, failed to provide Amodu with enough time for preparations, especially tune-up friendly matches. Football fans were first treated to the cancellation of a friendly match against the Egyptian national team, a match that would have afforded the coaching crew the opportunity to try out the players was thus lost as the mafia in the team held the nation to ransom.
There were also reports which indicated that the final team list for Mali 2002 was not drawn up by the coach, but by a cabal led by Sunday Oliseh. Talks were rife of the coach and the mafia doing a barter on who should be in the team and who should be dropped. That was how an off-form Victor Ikpeba, who had put in only 15 minutes of football action for his Spanish club this season, got on the list. An in-form Benedict Akwuegbu and some other younger players were dropped.
With a team produced by factors other than merit, it did not come as a surprise that the Eagles struggled to beat a young Algerian team, led by a tired Abdulhafiz Tasfaout, by a lone goal. The Super Eagles, lacking bite and coordination up-front, struggled to hold a young and an inspired Malian team to a goaless draw. Against a Liberian team that had scores to settle on the grounds of their elimination from the Japan-South Korea World Cup train, they were, once again, in the words of a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) commentator, "lucky" to have a player in the mould of Julius Aghaowha.
Reports emanating from Mali after the group matches were depressing. The players were said to frequent night clubs and got no sanctions from their coaches. The so-called 'big boys' were the leaders of the night-clubbing activities.
In the quarter-final match against the Black Stars of Ghana, the Eagles regained a little of their traditional panache. They, however, failed to score more than one goal in a game that yielded a sack-load of chances.
In their semi-final match against a better prepared Senegalese team, led in the attack by the current African Footballer of the Year, El'haji Diouf, the Eagles came unstuck and they fell 1-2 after extra time. Fans back home groaned at the defeat, but the players were said to have celebrated the loss with an all-night visit to their usual joint.
Matters however got out of control when the team captain, who was obviously more powerful than the coach, insulted the Sports Minister and other NFA officials in camp. The assistant coach, Stephen Keshi, in a world press conference after the loss, blamed Mr. Patrick Okpomo for their defeat. "Okpomo should be blamed for the loss, why did he come to our camp?" Keshi asked. While all these were going on, the chief coach, Amodu, in a tacit approval of the players' actions kept mute.
The Sports Minister had done what most Nigerians expected of him (sacking of Amodu and the disbandment of the team) and had appointed Festus Adeboye Onigbinde as the new coach to take the Eagles to the Japan-South Korea World Cup later in the year.
Onigbinde is making his second coming to the job. He had once coached the Eagles between 1983 and 1984. He was in charge when the Eagles won the silver medal, losing 1-3 to Cameroon, in the finals of the 1984 African Cup of Nations held in Cote D'Ivoire.
Onigbinde is saddled with raising a World Cup team within four months. How well he does that will be gauged by the performance in Korea/Japan 2002 (ACONS)
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