Home-Based Super Eagles Primed To Fail Vs Mexico
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President Amaju Pinnick loves the kleig lights even though his looks are not television friendly.
Instead of sitting in the office to work and reshape the future of Nigeria Football, Pinnick prefers to walk into any Nigerian television station in a pre-arranged manner to talk all day. He loves that showmanship.
In barely a year to the end of his disastrous two-term tenure Pinnick suddenly found love with the home- based Super Eagles.
The home-based Eagles are products of a dead NPFL under the watch of Amaju Pinnick and Shehu Dikko.
An NPFL that has no sponsors for the past 4 years due largely to gross inefficiency and lack of accountability of the League Management Company (LMC), a contraption set up to defraud Nigerian Football.
Amaju Pinnick himself superintended over the diversion of huge sponsorship funds from SuperSport that would have laid a solid foundation for a viable NPFL.
Pinnick and Dikko allegedly proceeded further to defraud NEXT DIGITAL TV and REDSTRIKE by pocketing their signature Bonus fee, two potential sponsors who made attempts to rescue the NPFL.
An NPFL that has not paid match officials Indemnities for the past 2 years, yet the match officials under the aegis of the Nigeria Referees Association (NRA) are not complaining.
An NPFL where league matches results are influenced by home teams.
An NPFL whose staff are being owed back log of salaries for the past year.
What then did Nigerians really expect from a home-based team hurriedly put together in a few days?
What did we expect from such home-based team when the flagship of the nation’s domestic football, the NPFL, is in tatters?
How does Pinnick want to lay a solid foundation for a home-based Eagles in barely a year of his two- term corruption-ridden tenure?
What has happened to the past 7 years when Pinnick was gallivanting all over Europe begging parents of players of Nigerian descent, who migrated many years ago to play for the Super Eagles of Nigeria?
Prior to the game against a fortified Mexican national team Pinnick exhibited his fake love for the home- based Eagles by openly addressing them, giving them false hope of their future in Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Pinnick was only exhibiting his love for the kleig lights as the more appropriate place to address the players was the dressing room.
Pinnick and his third-rate coach Gernot Rohr have already primed the home-based Eagles to fail.
Nigeria’s home-based players can compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world with a vibrant NPFL and a well-coordinated pattern of integrating exceptional talents from the home-Based players into the mainstream Super Eagles.
Coaches Clemens Westerhof, late Stephen Keshi and Shuaibu Amodu got it right.
BY HARRISON JALLA
