24 Feb 2008 |
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Super Eagles: Beyond Berti Vogts Berti Vogts, the coach of the country's senior football team, the Super Eagles, has turned in his letter of resignation. Initial reactions: He is gone! Good riddance. Good for him... the jubilation was so loud, it was evident in the tone of the reporting of the event by the media. Coming about three weeks after the end of the Nations Cup tournament in Ghana, many sports enthusiasts even felt that Berti Vogts should have resigned long before now or he should have been fired by his employers, the Nigeria Football Association. There are conflicting reports about the manner of his departure though: Was he dismissed? Did he resign? Whatever may be the truth, Nigerians are relieved that the man under whose guidance the Super Eagles recorded their most woeful performance in 26 years has been asked to get out. When Berti Vogts was recruited as the coach of the Super Eagles in January 2007, many Nigerians expressed misgivings about his records as a coach. Yes, he led the German team to victory in the European Championships in 1996, but as coach of the Scottish national team he barely managed to win nine matches out of about 32. He left Scotland in a huff, citing "disgraceful abuse" from the fans and the media. Senior players in the Scottish national team told the press that under Vogts, the team lacked "direction" and suffered from "poor management". Before Scotland, Berti Vogts spent six months in Kuwait as national coach. This was the man that Nigeria's talent scouts recruited to take the Super Eagles to the World Cup in 2010. He was offered a good deal, with Glo, the GSM company, offering to pick up his monthly bills. But Vogts had hardly settled down to the job when trouble began. He chose to spend 20 days in Europe and ten days in Nigeria per month. His excuse was that most of the Nigerian players were in Europe anyway. This absenteeism and lack of contact with Nigerian football as it is played on the streets of Nigeria robbed Berti Vogts of the opportunity to study the terrain of his new assignment, embark on a strategic mapping and audit of available talent and recruit only the best legs for the task of taking Nigeria to World Cup 2010. Vogts also took charge of the Super Eagles at a moment when anxieties had become widespread about the capacity of the national team to impress the fans and win laurels. Nigerians are emotional about football. It is one major unifying factor in a land in need of common bonds. Football victory excites the public imagination. It gives the people hope and strengthens their sense of pride. Hitherto, Nigeria was rated as the No. 1 footballing nation in Africa; other countries refer to the special style of Nigerian football, displayed to great acclaim in the good old days, with due respect. It was therefore with high expectations that Nigerians went to Ghana 2008. The players arrived in camp on time. There were no quarrels over the payment of travel allowances and camp bonuses. Berti Vogts, the new coach, boasted that he was in charge, and that no one had interfered with his work unduly. But what did we get? : A disgraceful and colourless performance that saw the Super Eagles crashing out of the tournament in the Quarter-final. They played four matches but managed to win only one, and this was against the Squirrels of the Republic of Benin! Against the Elephants of Cote d'Ivoire, the Eagles of Mali, and the Black Stars of Ghana, the Super Eagles lost their wings. Match after match, Nigerians saw a team of talented players, who showed occasional flashes of brilliance but who could not blend as a team, whose attack lacked bite, whose midfield was mediocre, all because of the failure of the coaching bench. Although every Nigerian football fan is a coach of sorts, and even market women will offer advise on how to organise a football team, Berti Vogts's shortcomings were so glaring. Former Nigerian coach, Clemens Westerhof was one of the analysts of the tournament on Super Sports, a Cable Television Channel, the man was almost always hysterical, wondering why the Super Eagles coach would not make use of the abundant talents at his disposal on the field of play. Nigerians at home watching the matches were no less indignant. It wasn't Berti Vogts' fault. If he knew better, he would have done better. But he did not know his players. He had no clue about the Nigerian rhythm of fast-paced, tap-tap, expressive football. Instead, he subjected the Super Eagles to good old police football, marked by an over-reliance on aerial football, physical exertion, endless kick and follow, and defensive play. Before their disgraceful exit, Nigerians only saw flashes of good football from the feet of the Super Eagles may be once or twice. Better rated teams: Ivory Coast, Ghana and Mali took advantage of our loss of rhythm and won matches at our expense. In the quarter-finals, the Ghanaians had lost one man in the midfield, and they were down to ten. Rather than strengthen the Nigerian midfield and introduce more attackers to reap the fruits of the advantage that Nigeria had won, Berti Vogts chose to send more defenders to the field! At the end of the tournament, no Nigerian player was listed among Africa's Best Eleven in the tournament: a painful outcome considering the richness of talents on the Nigerian side. FIFA has also since lowered Nigeria's position on the ranking table. Nigerians had every reason to be outraged. And yet in the face of this, Berti Vogts, the negligent coach, who is paid a five digit monthly salary in dollar, had the effrontery to say that he will stay till his contract expires in 2010. Nigerians were not only alarmed, they called for his head. The NFA officials gave him the cold shoulder. Even Glo reportedly held on to his pay cheque, if only temporarily. He too was defiant if not insouciant. He left for Germany from Ghana. He didn't even bother to come to Nigeria to submit a formal report that had been requested by the Nigerian authorities. Nor did he honour an invitation to a meeting with the NFA. Five days ago, Berti Vogts, through his lawyer issued a public statement in which he alleged that "the actions and behaviour of the NFA during and after the Nations Cup made further co-operation impossible." Whatever Berti Vogts says, he should just go. I do not share the view of those who argue that Vogts should be given a second chance and that Nigerians are bad losers. After Vogts' exit from Scotland in 2004, a new coach, Walter Smith took over, and the Scottish national team suddenly began to shine. The point that has been made with Berti Vogts' exit is that for once, Nigerians are insisting on quality performance. There is a consensus that has emerged along the following line: half measures are not good enough for the country in football. Berti Vogts has been axed and we all love the statement that has been made. But Vogts is an outsider. The critical issues go beyond his appointment as the coach of the Super Eagles. Ultimately, Berti Vogts is not the problem. The problem is within. The same principle that has been applied in showing Berti Vogts the door needs to be applied internally, in order to rescue Nigerian football and indeed sports administration in Nigeria from the doldrums. What the House of Nigerian Football requires is a through cleansing and this process must begin with the leadership and management of the NFA. The Nigerian Government may not be in a position to sanitise the NFA directly because of the sensitive issue of autonomy, but it can do something about the Ministry of Sports, and the Nigerian civil society can begin to speak up to call for changes in the management of Nigerian football and the dismantling of the NFA committee as presently constituted. Berti Vogts has been accused of mediocrity. The NFA is actually the very headquarters of mediocrity. Football management in Nigeria is in the hands of a group of untouchables, a conniving, self-seeking Mafia that is used to a culture of hypocrisy. Elections into the NFA committee are often worse than Nigerian elections. Knowledgeable persons who want to make a difference are hounded away by the politicians in charge of Nigerian football. Why did they recruit Berti Vogts in the first place? No man can give what he does not have. For many years, Nigerians have complained about the use of over-aged players in the country's football teams. It is common knowledge that many of our footballers are over-aged, and yet every year, we parade the same set of tired and old legs wielding certificates of age declaration. I recommend a test for all the players to check their true age. The revelations should be made public please. The World Cup qualifiers will start in June 2008. With Nigeria's woeful performance in Ghana, it is doubtful if the Super Eagles would be able to qualify. A new national coach should be recruited without further delay. This time around, the NFA should try local coaches. Vogts' exit should be seen as an opportunity to begin to grow and nurture local talent. A foreign technical adviser who knows his football may be recruited to work with the local coach, but in the long run, local coaches should be given the right exposure. They can be sent abroad on internship at some of those foreign teams that Nigerians love so much. They should be challenged. There is a National Institute of Sports where coaches and athletes used to be trained locally. But the NIS has long been abandoned; it is under-funded; it has been forgotten. Generally, there is a problem of capacity and infrastructure in the sports sector. In the past, there were well-equipped local stadia, very active sports ministries and centres where the young and gifted were encouraged to engage in sports and excel. But gradually, the infrastructure collapsed no thanks to the lack of vision of Nigeria's leaders and the absence of a culture of maintenance. The National Stadium in Lagos was renovated in 1999 ahead of the World Youth Football tournament hosted by Nigeria. Today, the Lagos Stadium is desolate. The most active part of the stadium is the section where they sell peppersoup and nkwobi and dance disco. Its vast fields have been taken over by neighbourhood miscreants who swoop on you like locusts asking for money. In the evenings, the place is taken over by women of different virtues. The Ogbe Stadium in Benin used to be a rendezvous for local talents in tennis, swimming and athletics. Not anymore. The local football league also used to attract a lot of excitement. That has changed. Young Nigerians now prefer to watch European football. All their football heroes are in Europe. The low tolerance for non-performance that has been demonstrated in the Berti Vogts case is missing in nearly every other aspect of our national life. It is a value that must be re-discovered. If a man cannot manage the country's electricity system, he should not be rewarded with higher appointments. If a man is the head of a police force that is an embarrassment to all and sundry, why honour him with a National Award? If a Senator has an election petition against him before a tribunal and he is likely to lose his seat, why decorate him with National Honours? There are too many contradictions in Nigerian life and society. Bert Vogts was initially resilient because he thought he could exploit this limitation. The real joke is on us. There are too many misfits in positions of privilege and authority who should be given the Berti Vogts treatment, but they continue to stay on, causing so much damage, because our sense of values and standards is forever selective and applied only when it is convenient to do so.
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