Our youth teams deserve the right coach to rule the world - Ezeugo
Assessing the nation’s football and its managers
Ex-international, Emeka Ezeugo, a.k.a. Eagles Destroyer, granted this interview to Vandykesport.com from his base in India, nay USA. |
You and I, the media, football administrators and the entire football family of Nigeria have been short-changing our footballers for more than a decade.
Can elementary school teachers lecture in the university? Our National Teams are the highest institutions of football in Nigeria yet we provide our best students with inadequate technical staff and expect high standards and fabulous results. Things don't work that way. Let's get real. We just aren’t putting down for our country the way we should. We are running the affairs of our football exactly the way our top government officials run Nigeria. Like a charlatan would run a business that doesn't belong to him or the way an armed robber would run a bank. No sane Nigerian would be surprised the way things have turned out. I guess if I wanted a job with the national team, I ought to be singing praises of the great job that the cartel has been doing. You all know that I'm straight as they come - an alpha-Nigerian. They don't make my pedigree anymore, just about to become extinct.
Flamingoes aborted title chase and Falconets’ Chile 2009 FIFA World Cup campaign
Our youth teams deserve better. Little minds would say that I'm a doomsayer if I told you the Chile bound team would return home the same way. This is not rocket science but it's scientific in its way and our youth teams deserve the right sweat merchant cum tactician in order to rule the world. Not through deceit though. Given the same girls, the Chile bound team and Falcons that were in the Olympics, I would have won the Championship, God willing. Any takers can try me. I love my country dearly and I love the game dearly. I need no other drive.
Can Henry Nwosu deliver the U-17 FIFA World Cup shield?
Nwosu is my boy. Peace be with him. I wish him success and if he needs my assistance, I will be there in an instant. He knows best what's best for the Eaglets.
The redeployment of Dr. Amos Adamu
The game misses no one and will not miss Amos Adamu. But he can't live without the game. He is a Nigerian who loves the game. The game has given him everything he has got. He will be a fool not to adore the damn game. He is still with CAF and FIFA. So he is very much around. If I were a national team coach now and called on him for team related assistance, he will certainly oblige. I got nothing but love for Amos. He never gave me a job, he never wanted to see me around Nigerian football, in fact, if he had his ways, he would have made it eternal, but I love that son of a gun. He's still the man. He never gave me a pass. But I am not mad at him.
FIFA U-17 World cup (Nigeria 2009)
I have no interest in Nigeria hosting the U-17 World Cup. It's a minor scam anyway. The biggest scam was telling Nigerians that we were vying for World Cup 2010 courtesy - Obasanjo and Segun Odegbami. If those guys knew what hosting the World Cup would do to our country - an economy game-changer, they would have spent our country's last kobo and vast human resources on it. Sure that wasn't part of the master plan. People with brains way smaller than a mustard seed would think of fronting a campaign and then embezzle the funds earmarked for the bid, pull out and tell us that they gave it their best shot.
Nigeria and the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa
Our senior team just won a lottery. They ought to be planning how they will play in South Africa because there's no opposition in the qualifiers. Anyone thinking that Tunisia will beat us or collect three points from six must have lost his damn mind or wishes to place his futile views against those of the game's educated mind. The teams that will compete in the last four of 2010 World Cup are already dreaming it now. Commencement of the World Cup will be the crunch time for actualization of their dream, you copy? That's how champs roll.
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