Sports anywhere in the real advanced world is a science. It is not voodoo. Sports is not left to chances again. The quality of management structures you put in place will to a most larger extent determine the quality of results you will get.
I insist that the Super Falcons that lost yesterday by eight whooping goals did not lose to Germany. They rather lost to the Lugardian technology of football management in the Glass House.
I recall with vivid clarity that the backroom technical staffers in my former club, Zamalek SC of Egypt, upon the fixture of any match, whether friendly or competitive, from the day the match is settled will be played would have set out to know every inch of detail about the opponents, players, technical staffers, community, weather, pitch, film clips of opponents’ previous games etc These are called RECONNAISSANCE DATA.
Even with a confused NFA as it is now, there surely are no such prior information available to the team that went to play Germany in Leverkusen. We went into the game blindly. I am so sure our FA officials did not know whether the girls would be playing on artificial or grass pitch. The Nigerian girls probably trained on grass whereas the match was on the artificial pitch.
I can swear that our FA officials are not aware that the boots used to play on an artificial pitch IS NOT the same that is used on a grass pitch. With the possibility of knowing the weather in Leverkusen by this time of the year should be very cold made the girls to train in humid Abuja. They played under 3 degrees.
Before the girls would understand what befell them, they were 4-0 down and one added before half time. I saw the trend less than three minutes after the game started. I presaged they were going to be down by 5-0 in the first half.
Skill for skill, talent for talent and football knowledge in tandem, the German girls were not superior to the Nigerians.
Did we not behave like the Boubons of France now? Nigeria lost 5-0 to the Les Fennecs (The Desert Foxes) Algeria in Annaba in a World Cup qualifier. The Algerians know it will be pretty difficult beating the much talents Nigerian team. Our minds were set for the grass pitch Stade 5 Juillet 1962 in Algiers. They dragged us to Annaba where they had an artificial pitch. They made us played in the cold at night under flood lights. We were flogged.
Compare that scenario to this. Any difference? Now ask, which single individual was in the employ of the NFA then who is still there today to know and point these things. We keep changing our key technical men in the NFA every four years. The last time I was in the Confederation of African Handball (CAHB) headquarters in Cairo, about five of the staffers still know and identified me as a former Nigerian player whereas, that same year, about four months before I went on the Cairo trip, I was in the Handball Federation of Nigeria (HFN) secretariat in Lagos and none of them know me by face lest my name of my records. This was Nigeria I played for 20 years vis-à-vis Egypt I played in for two years!
Catch my drift!
NIGERIA AND HISTORY OF EIGHT GOALS:
DATELINE is Kaduna 18th October 1998. It was the inaugural African Women's Football Championship (AWC). Nigeria trounced Morocco 8-0 and Democratic Congo Republic beat Egypt 4-1. The Nigerian team dominated the match from the very beginning with Nkiru Okosieme opening the scoring in the 17th minute.
Patience Avre made it 2-0 for the host team in the 30th minute and Okosieme scored again just before the interval. The second half saw the host team enjoying greater advantage. Rita Nwadike hit twice while captain Omagbemi, Mercy Akide and Avre scored a goal each to seal up the 8-0 victory for the Nigerians.
Eight teams participated in the championship: Nigeria, Morocco, Democratic Congo Republic and Egypt in Group A, and Ghana, South Africa, Mozambique, and Cameroon in Group B. The top two finishers represented Africa in the Women's World Cup that held in the United States in 1999.
you are spot on Jide.
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