Task before the Super Eagles in the ongoing 2024 AFCON, expectations of Nigerians
Since 2013 when the Nigerian Super Eagles lifted the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) Championship trophy in South Africa, it has been tough or near impossible to clinch the trophy again.
The closest being their outing in 2019, where the Super Eagles lost narrowly to the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon through penalty shootouts.
Since then it has been near-miss upon near-miss. No thanks to mother luck, or perhaps poor maskmanships of the trainers.
Whatever be the case, we think Nigeria deserves another victory in the AFCON football fiesta and possibly in the ongoing edition in Cote d’Ivoire.
We wouldn’t say that the competition for the Super Eagles has not started well, with 1-1 apiece in the first game with the Nzalang Nationale of Equatorial Guinea,it was not a bad start. Though soccer pundits and well-meaning Nigerians expected the Super Eagles to have tucked in the three maximum points in that game, they got a draw instead.
Head Coach for the Nigerian National Team, Jose Peseiro attributed the draw to hard luck, noting that his team played well, but filtered away reasonable chances that would have changed the narrative.
Well, there will always be excuses or reasons for failure, but we won’t want such excuses to endure. What Nigerians want is victory and anything short of that may not be acceptable.
As we progress into the AFCON, 2024 football championship, let the coaching crew put their house and arse in order. Nigerians are more interested in victories, instead of trying to defend failures.
Failures or poor performances could be attributed simply to lack of adequate preparations, incentives of even owed backlog salaries and allowances.
Others are poor coaching strategies,or outright incompetence on the part of the trainers, not forgetting lack of commitment by players and possibly undue focus on proceeds accrueable from the tournament.
In the past, our National team players used to devote more time to patriotism and national pride,but today the only language our youths understand is money, so their interests in most cases are divided or outrightly diverted to monetary gains, instead of glory.
This syndrome has not augured well with our football over time.
So it is important for us to recreate the spirit of nationalism while prosecuting any match such as AFCON 2024, holding in Cote d’Ivoire. The ideology of underdogs and group of death should be completely discarded from the players’ minds. It should be stressed and seriously too that there is no underdog in sports competitions like the AFCON. Reason being that all the teams competed in their various zones during the qualifying stages and duly qualified before coming to the finals of a competition of this magnitude. Therefore it will be full-hardy to regard any team as an underdog.
Again, some people tend to describe some groups as groups of death, which is erroneous in the first place. We want to categorically state that there is nothing like that, such a concept only exists in the minds of its mooters. Though Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal, Morocco and Egypt have been tipped as favourites that may lift the trophy. This can only materialise when the teams and their trainers do what is expected from them.
At this juncture, it is important to look at the deliverables for possible breakthroughs that will lead to winning the trophy at the end of the tournament. First and foremost improved packages for coaches and players cannot be ruled out in achieving such results. It is on this premise that we are doffing off our hats for the President of Nigeria, Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu for approving the payment of the backlog of salaries owed to the German Tactician of the Super Eagles, Jose Peseiro, amounting to millions of Dollars to further motivate him to action. Though salaries are not supposed to be owed to that tune,it is plausible to note that the President had at least hearkened to the cries of the people to save the situation.
The President should therefore do more to ensure that such anomaly does not occur again. As for the coach and his team they should step up their game. Their second game with the host, Cote d’Ivoire is must win, no matter how difficult the encounter might be. This must be so to reposition the team for the task ahead. Eleven years down the line since the Super Eagles won the AFCON cup is not two days, therefore everything humanly possible should be done to re-enact the feat.
As the Super Eagles gear up towards the final strategy to move to the next stage in the ongoing AFCON Football Competition and possibly win the trophy, all we owe them is support. The Coach on his part should inculcate into his boys the fact that every match brings them closer to the cup. That they should therefore eschew complacency or under-rating any team, bearing in mind that it is not over, till it is over.
