The deafening silence from UEFA about the obvious displays of Russian racism undermines the integrity of the sport of football. The sign in question is that displayed about Nigerian player Osaze Odemwingie, who incidentally has a Russian mother ...
Take a long look at the sign above ... look at the jeering fans ... it shows a banana (often thrown at black players) ... pretty pathetic.
This would not be hard to understand when you look at the event that occurred one week later in Russia, where concert-goers were attacked by over 100 skin heads, and child was stabbed to death ... horrific!
Who organizes and orchestrates these things? This is extreme racism, xenophobia and seems to be common place. If a 14 year old girl can be murdered in cold blood one week later, is this a place where we would want FIFA to host a World Cup??? I think not. Who can guarantee the security of fans around the world, if these people would readily murder a child?
Maybe these thugs are mutates from Chernobyl or Dzerzinsk ... who knows ... there are so many of them ...
Back to football, UEFA and the Russian Football Federation have not made any comments about this display of racism at the Lokomotiv Moscow match. UEFA though has taken considerable effort to issue a ban on vuvuzelas, which have never been an in issue in games across Europe ...
The Late Ali Sibai … The Greatest Football Fan from Africa … The Troubadour of Football …
All football fans have seen Sheik Ali Sibai … the Egyptian in the red fez … supporting fans at all the big FIFA games … Ali Sibai was from Egypt … a trained engineer … he arrived in the USA in 1994 for the World Cup and he stayed behind … and eventually became a US citizen (so the story goes)!
The video was recorded on a chance meeting in Paris ... a very interesting moment ... an hour spent following Ali Sibai around Paris while he is constantly entertaining local people in Paris.
His story from a brief conversations is as follows - He was an engineer in Egypt and a fan of Al Ahly ... After coming to America during the World Cup in 1994 he stayed behind ... he said he drove taxis in New York for little while, did some work as an engineer but he loved people and he loved football … he had other jobs, but traveling and football were his joy … so he returned to Egypt and so his journey began … the guy in the red fez wherever football matches were played … He was often seen at African Nations Cup matches, Gulf Cup Matches, Arab Champions League … He enjoyed the patronage of wealthy sponsors and was flown to matches across the world!!! He was truly a man of the world, he held Egyptian and American citizenship ...
Sadly Ali Sibai died in June last year (2009) after a brief illness just as the FIFA Conferderations Cup was beginning … The World Cup in Africa is incomplete without Ali Sibai … if you are going to South Africa, wear a red fez in honor of Ali … hold up a picture of him or play a guitar … Sheik Ali we miss you! وداع !!!
Sources: http://www.mbc.net of Cairo and video interview in Paris, France.
These were the headlines that followed the Nigerian National Team (aka the "Super Eagles") from yahoo.com ...
The purpose of this article is not to chastise the players who represented Nigeria. It is to highlight the lack of collective and personal preparedness. It also should highlight the misguided firing of Shaibu Amodu ... the wasting of $2,000,000 on a 3 month coaching stint for a new coach and the external meddling of a governmental body (the so called "Presidential Task Force").
Anyway about the performance of the Super Eagles - The mistakes made on the field revealed that this team was not a good team ... they did not play well together. The mistakes made were surprising at this level. I shall list some of them.
* Losing the ball in our own half - creating final 3rd situations for the opponent. This happened against Argentina and South Korea ... in both instances the losses resulted in goals. Poor passing in our own half ...
* Selfish play - A constant problem ... which told me that Nigeria was not using video replay as a coaching tool. Osaze, Obasi and Yakubu ... in many cases Martins was a victim (and was a victim of Kaita's foolish foul).
* Kaita's foolish foul - This is still beyond belief. We shall consign him to the Football Manager ...
* Yakubu's miss - Yakubu started ahead of Obafemi Martins, yet he failed to justify his starting spot. Yakubu's game has spoken for itself - I need not say anything.
* Nigeria tied at 2-2 with South Korea and Obafemi Martins misses a 1-on-1 ... at the club level the pressure of the situation could have caused more composure on the part of the player ... his mind was not in the game ...
All that can be said is that this team was very poor. Kanu came in and played as a midfielder - he was in control, though slow he helped us mightily ... we are still dependent on players from the 90s era ... the current crop play very undisciplined soccer. If Obasi or Osaze or Yakubu had made ONE pass instead of shooting we would have had 4 points (a tie against Argentina and a win against South Korea).
Some high points were the play of Kalu Uche, the on field play of Danny Shittu, the ball winning of Lukman Haruna, and some good play by Kanu in his final game ...
However for our group we must be thankful that the best teams qualified, we were one of the worst teams in the tournament.
Much work remains for the Super Eagles and Nigeria (Not missing friendly dates, having a good local league, building up local coaches) ... but this is an article for another day.
The problems experienced in this World Cup can be traced back the problems that surfaced during the ANC. My concern (and I vocalized this) was that our progress was derailed by the ANC.
I said Amodu's mistake was not taking a page from the St. Etienne experience, where Nigeria successfully took down a bigger team. In the ANC we faced another big-team in Egypt, with a very conservative Makalele-ized squad (read 4-5 defensive midfielders) ... we lost comprehensively. The Egypt loss effectively killed Amodu's chances of coaching ... I warned him ... he did not listen. If he had studied all this and put together a preparation program, he would have been here ... but Amodu was Amodu and he was conservative to the end.
In looking back at the St. Etienne game where Nigeria defeated France. I notice that Nigeria played Olofinjana, Etuhu, Kanu and Kalu Uche ... this game revealed some strengths of Nigeria and some weaknesses of France.
The strength of Nigeria is in talismanic players like Ike Uche. His ability is seen below in the video below.
This particular effort highlights some key skills.
1. Stamina to chase down a ball. 2. Controlling the ball and beating your marker. 3. Out running your marker. 4. Shooting with force accurately.
It is in these areas that we really missed Ike Uche. Though Obasi is similar to Ike Uche ... he is (and no disrespect to him) not YET as good as Ike Uche. He cannot do what Uche did in the video above. Uche has done this same move against Real Madrid and other La-Liga teams ... Furthermore Uche has deep football intelligence and has scored against the best players. Argentina was very very very very very very HAPPY that they did not see Ike Uche anywhere on the field - They ALL know him - They ALL fear him ... what a pity for us.
So the ANC only introduced uncertainty and confusion. In came the back-slapping Presidential Task Force, and a few weeks after the ANC and after $2,000,000 changed hands in came Lars Lagerback with a 3 month contract in hand ... Amodu was now gone with 1,000,000 Naira and a Kia Jeep as a severance package.
In light of the ANC debacle I advised bringing on Siasia to partner Amodu. Which may have helped with some selection issues, but very likely we would have STILL seen this Kaita situation.
The progress we had made were with the Olympic games of 2008 and the St. Etienne game was a possible path to success. The U-17 and U-20 tournaments also produced some ingredients to fortify the team ... but Lars Lagerback had 3 months to study this and to quickly put together a preparation program.
I had reminded the Nigerians that Siasia, 2 years earlier had ALREADY conducted a tour of South Korea and Malaysia with the Olympic team. Comparing this to Lars Lagerback efforts, we witnessed Lagerback struggling to put together an effective camp, trying to delegate the arranging of friendlies to the NFF and muddling around hotel arrangements. Siasia having learned from past experiences usually set up his camping independently from the NFF (Faro, Malaysia, South Korea, Holland).
So after many hiccups Lagerback was able to get some meaningful games against Saudi Arabia, Columbia and North Korea ... all looked good and he firmed up his line up. When he got to South Africa, somehow the tires came off the car and the team did not seem so composed. The glaring issues have been individualism and indiscipline, coupled with a good dose of stage fright.
The discipline problem - Our problem has been discipline, we know this to be true. Largerback has mostly got a good 23-man squad ... where he is troubled is the lack of discipline.
Game 1: Ordiah makes square pass across the face of our goal. The ball is intercepted! No discipline.
Game 1: Goal comes off of an unmarked player from the turnover mentioned above. No discipline.
Game 1: Osaze not making the relevant through pass (see the same play in Argentina - Korea). No discipline.
Game 2: Sani Kaita bringing bush football antics into the World Cup. No discipline.
Yakubu's miss was understandable because the Argentinians and Greeks were getting that too from Enyeama ...
With respect to the discipline issues, we can also reflect back on the lack on on-field composure was also evidenced in the Tunisia game when they quicky equalized (the WC qualifier for clarification).
We do not have a creative midfielder right now, but that SHOULD NOT prevent us from playing good, tight football.
Bright spots in the Greece game were: Danny Shittu (To CE member Yaya, Shittu saved us too much in this game), Enyeama, Kalu Uche (good possession, sometimes too much). Whereas the Nigerian defense has been good ... the discipline issues are like malfunctioning parts on an imported 1970s Citroen ... a bit too hard to tie down.
Remember with BOTH Taiwo and Echiejile going down and after the sub of Osaze, we had used up ALL of our subs ... this game was cascading series of disasters caused by one stupid mistake ...
The best thing we can do is to field our strongest players against Korea. This will mean starting Obafemi Martins, Osaze and Kalu Uche. This will also mean playing Utaka in place of the errant Kaita ... the best we can hope for is something like a 4 goal rout of Korea ... I have faith in this sort of line up ... to actually think that Kaita has been decamping Utaka all this time is actually hard to imagine. Despite Utaka's poor season, we should reflect on the seasons of Podolski and Klose and remember who John Utaka actually is!
The good news is that Argentina WILL have some incentive to DEFEAT Greece because Messi is yet to score and Milito and Aguero have not yet scored. I do not think Messi will want Higuain to run away with the scoring title.
For Sani Kaita, his red card could be a 2, 3 or 4 game ban depending on what FIFA says (if Nigeria had made it further). However his Eagles career at risk, which is a shame ... this incident is worse that the Kingston Lariya incident and he has already made international headlines. His redemption will have to come at the club level ... redeeming himself will be very very hard.
So I have started migrating some of my posts on the CyberEagles forum ... along with that I will be posting the much delayed Ali Sibai tribute ... Ali Sibai was the Egyptian with the red fez who played guitar at big football games.
Nigeria coach Samson Siasia saw his side lose the match late on
South Korea scored two late goals to beat Nigeria 2-1 in Group F of the World Youth Championship in Holland on Wednesday. Captain Baek Ji-hoon scored in the first minute of injury time, three minutes after Park Chu-young had curled in a free-kick.
"My players lost concentration in the last five minutes," Nigeria coach Samson Siasia said. ...
... Nigeria had the lead through an 18th-minute goal
After the game this is what the South Korean coach said "We'll have to concentrate on the counters, but my players have got more confidence from this win"
... Well they did take confidence from the win ... they defeated Nigeria in much the same way - set plays and counting on the Nigerian to lose confidence ... here is the Scouting report on Nigeria from a South Korean Newspaper: Link to South Korean article
