Nobody gave them a chance. This is not because Nigeria does not know how to tap football. After all, we have once won the Olympic gold in the game and have been world champions in several FIFA organized football competitions.
During the week, the Nigerian Olympic football team was in the news. None of it had to do with our artistry in the world’s most popular sport. Sadly, much of it had to do with our artistry in getting simple things done very wrong. For several days, the representatives of the world’s most populous black nation and Africa’s largest economy to the world’s greatest sporting spectacle, the Olympics, were stranded in Atlanta Georgia. For days on end, no one seemed to know how to get our football team to Brazil.
In this day and age, any twelve year old with a smart phone can make effective flight arrangements from any place on the planet to any corner of the globe. Somehow, the old men entrusted with managing our football could not make simple flight arrangements for our team. Let’s face it, they dealt our nation a terrible blow in the eyes of the world. On every major TV network in every nation, the world laughed at Nigeria. Are we not frightened that our nation no longer feels shame? We do bizarre things and go on as if everything is okay. No… no, everything is not okay!
I understand that it took the magnanimity of an American airline to finally get our boys who nearly missed their first match, to Rio. The Nigeria team had to practically dash from the airport to the football stadium. They had no time to rest, no time to acclimatize and certainly no time to practice. Everybody expected them to show up in the field and concede a basket of goals. Lo and behold, the Nigerian team beat the nimble Japanese five goals to four! Nigeria’s Oghenekaro Etebo scored four goals all by himself.
I stayed awake to watch the match and thoroughly celebrated Nigeria’s unexpected win. I was however worried that the lesson that we might take out of this lack of planning is that good planning is not necessary for success. Anyone who watched the match would have noticed that after Nigeria led five goals to two, the Nigerian team lost a lot a lot of gas. The boys were clearly exhausted and if the game had gone on any further, the Japanese may have equalized.
I was also awake through last night and this morning and watched the remarkable opening ceremonies of the Rio Olympics on TV. What a spectacle! I had to ask myself what happened to all the problems the Brazilians were supposed to have organizing the Olympics. The music, the choreography, the acrobatics, the fireworks, the audio, the video, the ‘everything’, was simply brilliant. I saw the citizens of the world come together at the world famous Maracana stadium in Rio: nations big and small, friends and enemies; Israelis and Palestinians; Iraqis and Iranians; athletes from both North and South Korea; Russians and Ukrainians, Blacks, Whites and Latinos; Christians and Muslims.
For the first time, there was even a Refugee Olympic team made up of athletes who have fled their homes. They marched without a national flag. It was breath-taking and the well-known scantily dressed Brazilian beauties were on full display as the world began the first Olympic Games in South America. Nobody knows how to party better than the Brazilians. No party in the world is bigger than the Olympics. It looks like Brazil and the Olympics were made for each other.
For the next sixteen days, about 11,000 of the world’s best athletes from about 208 countries will live together in the Olympic village. While they compete against each other, they will also share meals, make friends, share telephone numbers and take ‘selfies’. That is the spirit of the Olympics. We are all children of God and all the suspicion and hatred that fuel strife and bloodshed around the world need not be. For the next sixteen days, my TV would be my best friend. I don’t want to be told how it happened. I want to see the Olympics.
By the way, what happens to the Nigerians who created the national embarrassment for our football team? Will it be business as usual?
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