Nobody would ever be able to go into the
mind of Coach Stephen Keshi of the Super Eagles of Nigeria to verify if
he really believed before the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations that he could
win the trophy with the set of players he took to the tournament. It may
also not be easy to get the full details of exactly what transpired in
the camp of the Super Eagles that made them achieve the feat of winning
the 2013 Nations Cup when everybody believed that they could not go
beyond the quarter finals.
Their friendly match against the national
team of Cape Verde some days before the tournament helped to convince
most Nigerians that the hope of a sterling performance by the Eagles at
the tournament was very low. And true to the predictions, the Nigerian
team had a draw in its match against Burkina Faso, and another draw
against Zambia in its second match, even though they scored first in
both matches. So the Super Eagles were seen as a team that found it
difficult to score, and also found it even more difficult to defend the
goals they had scored.
The problem was not just that they had
two consecutive draws: Their performances in both matches were not
inspiring. Then in their third match, they beat Ethiopia with two goals,
which were both penalty kicks. There are many people who believe that a
goal scored through a penalty is a narrow-escape goal. It was only the
quarter-final win against the tournament’s favourites, Ivory Coast, that
made many Nigerians to start hoping that perhaps the team could win the
bronze medal. But that hope had a lot of caution attached to it.
From that quarter-final match victory,
the Super Eagles were transformed from a mediocre team to a superlative
team. They were so different that Mamadou Samassa, the goalkeeper of the
Eagles of Mali, whom they beat by four goals to one in the semi-finals,
said it was the Brazilian team that played against them, and not the
Nigerian Super Eagles.
For the first time since the era of the
1994 Super Eagles team that won the 1994 Nations Cup and performed well
at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, the nation saw a national
football team that played with class, skill, confidence, purpose and
determination. Even though three out of the four defenders could be
described as neophytes in international tournaments, the team’s defence
did not show that it was jittery or disorganised. They were strong in
the air and on the ground, and played with cohesion. In the mid-field,
our midfielders never gave their opponents the leisure of playing the
ball as they liked. And the attack was constantly tormenting the
defence of the opponents, leading to goals scored in each match. No
member of the team got a straight red card for any infringement. The
Super Eagles’ team was a complete team in all the departments of the
game.
No doubt, when a team achieves great
results, the coach is always praised. But while the praises continue to
rain on the coach and the players, there are some questions that many
have been looking for answers to. Who or what caused this magic to
happen in the Super Eagles’ team? Was it Keshi, the coach? What did he
do to a team that he assembled just a few weeks before the Nations Cup
that they would become this good? Was it that he downloaded his
exceptional coaching skills on the team within a month? Was it that he
fired them up to believe in themselves? Did he infuse a great dose of
patriotism in the players within these few weeks?
One complaint from Nigerian spectators
about the Super Eagles in the past decade was that the players used to
play as if there was nothing at stake. There was always the feeling that
they were not committed to the team, neither were they hungry to win
any match. They always played like a team that was hurriedly assembled
together, a team whose members never understood one another.
One of the reasons most Nigerians asked
for the dismissal of coach Amodu Shuaibu the two times he qualified
Nigeria for the 2002 and 2010 World Cup tournaments was that even though
those two separate Super Eagles teams qualified for the World Cup, the
low quality of their play made it look more like luck smiling on Nigeria
than the result of hard work and skills. Most Nigerians had their
hearts in the mouths whenever the Super Eagles were playing. Every match
against any team was a struggle, and any time Nigeria scaled through,
everybody heaved a sigh of relief and thanked God for saving our skin as
well as saving us from hypertension. Even though a European coach, Lars
Lagerback, took us to the 2010 World Cup, our lacklustre performance
got to a head that President Goodluck Jonathan suspended Nigeria from
all football competitions, even though he rescinded the decision not
long after.
The employment of Samson Siasia as coach
afterwards was thought to bring back the glorious days of a Super Eagles
team that played with authority, but he ended up not qualifying the
team for the 2012 Nations Cup, which led to his dismissal. Because
Nigerians were tired of foreign coaches, they still insisted on an
indigeneous coach, even after the exit of Siasia. That was how Keshi
emerged. Given the results he had achieved in Mali and Togo as a coach
and his achievements as a captain of the Super Eagles, much hope was
placed on him. But from later 2011 when he was employed till the
quarter-final match against Ivory Coast on February 10, 2013, based on
the performance of the Super Eagles under him, most people did not
believe that he was the man Nigeria had been waiting for. Those who gave
him any chance at all asked that he be given at least 4 years to build a
team. And to everybody’s amazement, he won the trophy with a team that
was made up of unknown and untested players. And the team did not win
the trophy by chance or through penalty shoot-outs or suspicious calls
by any referee. They emphatically knocked out their opponents one after
another till they lifted the trophy.
However, I don’t think it was the
superior coaching skills of Keshi or the exceptional playing skills of
the players that made them play like a World Cup-winning team. What
possibly made the difference in that team was the inspiring talk, the
motivation from the coach, the father-figure role of Keshi as well as a
hunger by the players to prove the millions of doubting Thomases in
Nigeria and abroad wrong. The coach believed in them by choosing them
instead of some other better known players. The coach gave them a chance
and they did not want to betray that trust reposed in them. Above all,
they did not want to let their nation down.
It is a pointer to the fact that those
who have built great nations don’t have super human beings or super
leaders. They just have leaders that fire up the led. And such fired-up
followers work like Trojans to make a mark for their nation in any field
they find themselves in. It is something we have to emulate as a
nation. For Nigeria to rise above its present state as a nation, our
leaders must put the nation first and also display a capacity to
motivate the citizens and turn them to lions. Once there is sincerity of
purpose, this is not difficult to do.
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