SPORTS ROUNDUP

Apr 14 2011

Flying Eagles depart for Jo’burg today for AYC

By: Adeyinka Adedipe

THE Flying Eagles will depart for South Africa today for the African Youth Championship (AYC) slated for Johannesburg from this Sunday to May 3 with the hope of winning the trophy.

The Nigerian team will be hoping to qualify for the semi-final from Group B, which comprises world champion, Ghana, Cameroun and Gambia. The young Nigerians open their campaign against West African rival, Ghana, at the Rand Stadium in Johannesburg on Monday.

Preparatory to the tournament, the Nigerians played a two-legged friendly against Libya (formerly designated host), before moving over to Turkey where they played a series of friendly matches before coming back home after the competition was postponed due to the political uprising in Libya.

However, that did not deter the team from rounding off its preparation with a 3-1 victory over Nigeria Premier League side, Sharks of Port Harcourt. After failing to make an impression at the last World Youth Championship (WYC) in Egypt, coach John Obuh is confident that his current squad will conquer Africa.

Speaking before the team’s departure, Obuh assured that his wards would play as a team and not as individuals to lift the trophy. He said: “What we want to do is to play like a team in all our games because that is the only way we can win, and we intend to stick to that game plan. And with the quality of individuals in the team, I hope we will do well.”

Already, the team will be without Joel Obi just as it is not clear whether Musa Ahmed would be with the squad after being listed. It was gathered that his team, VV Venlo of Holland, was bent on holding on to its Nigerian jewel.

The Eredivise side, which is battling relegation, is hoping that Ahmed would help it avoid the drop. Meanwhile, president of the Nigeria Football Federation, Aminu Maigari, will lead the Nigerian delegation to the competition.

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Apr 14 2011

FIFA Ranking: Eagles move up

Nigeria climbed a step from the 39th position to 38 in the FIFA world rankings for the month of April released yesterday.

This minimal rise was on the back of victories against Ethiopia in the Nation Cup qualifiers and Kenya in an international friendly in Abuja last month.

Ghana move from the 16th position to 15 and maintained its top position on the African continent. Cote’d Ivoire moved four places to occupy the 21st position on the world rankings. Egypt continued its downward movement from 35 to 36. Nigeria is fourth on the in the continent where the biggest mover was South Africa.

They jumped seven places from 46 to 39 to make up the top five in Africa.
Spain maintained its number one position with Holland following closely thanks to victories in UEFA EURO 2012 qualifying.

There was, however, significant movement below them on the latest instalment of the global ladder. Brazil (3rd, up 2) have reclaimed a podium position, while Germany (4th, down 1) and Argentina (5th, down 1) have lost ground.

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Aug 10 2010

Lagerback was a mistake

By MERCY JACOB

… Idah, ex-Eagles media officer, says the Swede’s coming brought confusion

The last is yet to be heard on what transpired between the Eagles and Coach Lars Lagerback at the just concluded World Cup in South Africa where the team performed woefully. According to the Super Eagles’ former media man, Peterside Idah, who resigned immediately the Eagles were booted at the competition, the coming of the Swede coach to the team, his fresh ideas and tactics spelt catastrophe for the team.

The Eagles’ former safe hands said until African nations learn to give long term contracts to national team coaches and embrace developmental programme, there may be little or no change that they are clamouring for.

Idah made the revelation recently during a television programme in Supersport, where he said that the confusion caused by Coach Lagerback nearly mar the team’s last match against South Korea at the FIFA World Cup.
“ Shame to those clamouring for change, Idah began. We have problem in this country; we are always in haste, we hardly want to give time for building of a team. What we experienced in South Africa during the World Cup was a result of our lack of patience.

The team was thrown into total confusion in an effort to obey the voice of people who where clamouring for change of technical crew and we paid dearly for it at the Mundial. For me, if the technical crew led by Shaibu Amodu was allowed to continue, without throwing him out disgratefully, we might not have experienced such dismal outing as we witnessed in the Mundial. The coming of Lagerback, instead of being a blessing, turned out to be curse to the team and all of us suffered it. To tell you the truth, there is nothing like continuity when Lagerback came.

In a bid to please Nigerians and impress the stakeholders, different methods, different ideas were introduced, which ended up in confusion that disorganised the team. I’m not saying that he got it all wrong, but for the timing, it could not work. Looking at the time he was employed, it would be difficult for him to make any meaningful change. Infact, at a point, some of the players were finding it difficult to cope with his pace which resulted in what we saw at the World Cup. It got to a point the players were more or less choosing who to play and who not to play just to achieve result which they could not achieve.

What happened in Nigeria was not peculiar, it is a problem faced by most African nations African nations hardly stick to a coach for a long time without calling for change and they always pay dearly for it. They do it mostly to indigenous coaches. Change is good but not when it is wrongly done. We have to learnt from our last mistakes and are ready to introduce the real change, so that things will work out for us.

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