| Lessons from Angola |
 BY ARUKAINO UMUKORO
The just concluded 27th edition of the African Cup of Nations, Angola 2010, would be remembered for many things ranging from the bad to the memorable and the unexpected. The drama started even before the take off of the competition with the ambush of the Togolese national team buses by gunmen in Cabinda, Angola. The Togolese national team never recovered from that incident. It pulled out of the competition. This was closely followed by a pulsating 4-4 draw Mali played out with hosts Angola in the opening match, easing off some of the tension resulting from the unfortunate incident in Cabinda. And then, the unexpected loss of pre-tournament favourites, Ivory Coast, to the already written off Algerian team in the quarter finals. Beyond all of these, for most Nigerians, Angola 2010 was all about Nigeria, its team, the Super Eagles and chances of learning a few lessons at the Nations Cup as it looks forward to an impressive outing at the World Cup in South Africa coming up later in the year. The Super Eagles had made a wobbly start to the competition with a scandalous 1-3 loss to Egypt in its opening match. But the team later beat the odds and made the Nations’ Cup semi-final target set for it by the Nigerian Football Federation, NFF. Some football analysts have argued that the mandate given the team and its coach before the competition was indeed necessary since the competence of Amodu Shaibu, the Super Eagles’ coach, was at different times called to question during the World Cup/Nations’ Cup qualifiers. As the competition came to an end, Toyin Ibitoye of Mastersports International said the lessons learnt as far as the coaching crew is concerned is that, “for every tournament, when you give a coach a job to do, whether local or foreign coach, support him in every way to get the job done.” To do well at the World cup, Ibitoye said the national team and its coaching crew deserves the support of all Nigerians. He added that for instance some players whose inclusion in the Eagles team was questioned at the beginning of the competition have turned out to be key to the teams’ qualification for the semi final and meeting the target it had from the NFF. “For example, Yusuf Mohammed, who saved us twice from the goal line in the (quarter final) game against Zambia, Danny Shittu was also said to be unfit. But see, he was one of our best players in the tournament,” Ibitoye said. Nevertheless, some other analysts opined that the Eagles were simply lucky to have gone that far in the competition. For Afolabi Gambari, a sports consultant who was at the 2008 Nations’ Cup in Ghana, the story could have been much more different for the Super Eagles, if not for mother luck. “We did not prepare well for Ghana 2008 and we got knocked out in the quarter finals. The same thing would have happened again in Angola, but we managed to escape. We should learn how to prepare very well for any competition,” he said. He is of the opinion that if Nigeria hopes to do well at the World Cup, then it better prepare well for the competition. Apart from that, the need to integrate younger players into the Super Eagles team was brought to the fore with the courageous display of the youthful players in the Ghanaian team that came to Angola 2010. Most of the Black Stars players to Angola 2010 were members of the country’s Under-20 team which won the 2009 FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Egypt. “The lesson for Nigeria here has to be in terms of proper integration of the younger players into the senior national team. There is nothing wrong with bringing in young players like Rabiu Ibrahim into this team (Super Eagles), at least to learn. Then we are sure that we are building a team for the future that can compete favourably in world football,” said Camillus Nnaji, publisher of Pro-football magazine. Nnaji argued that a younger player would have been able to fill the yawning gap in the centre of the Eagles’ team where the absence of a creative midfielder like former Eagles’ captain, Austin Jay Jay Okocha is still deeply felt. Godwin Spiff-Sagbamah of HallySports International attributed this to the fact that the country was not doing enough in the area of discovering and nurturing football talents. “There are quite a lot of young, gifted players out there. But because we have refused to go out to hunt for them, we can’t find them. The NFF, as it is, just wait for competitions to come and go. They are not interested in how the game moves forward,” he said. As we look forward to the World Cup, Spiff-Sagbamah said he hopes that the nation’s football administrators would put in more effort in hunting for younger players in order to improve the country’s football fortunes. However, if Shaibu and some of the Eagles players could afford to call the bluff of their critics by at least meeting the target set for the team by the NFF, the same cannot be said of Nigerian referees, who did not have a shout out in Angola. Only Peter Edibe made Confederation of African Football, CAF, list to handle duties in Angola 2010 – as an assistant referee. Nigerian referees were also not on duty in Ghana 2008. This, Gambari believes, is an indictment on the country’s professional football league. He blames this on the corruption in the football league and hopes that the nations’ football handlers would learn from the snub by CAF for the umpteenth time. “Nigerian referees need a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the world,” said Ibitoye, who added that until there is significant improvement in the standard of officiating in the local football league, the country’s referees might continue to be ignored at international competitions.
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