Cybereagles

The major revelation in this World Cup is that there’s no substitute for investing in youth and developing a strong local league. That’s the only reason we’ve witnessed an all European World Cup semi-finals. Instead of doing what makes sense, our NFF is busy recruiting sub par players trained in European academies. For Nigeria to achieve football parity with the soccer powers, the NFF needs to refocus on grass roots development, a stable professional league and end over-reliance on foreign coaches


Cheers.

Basically when we fix the whole of Nigeria, football will also be fixed.

we have known this a long time ago, when the country improves, everything will follow

I don’t think Nigeria has a road map we’re lost trying to get the vehicle out of a pot holed water logged road!

It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

cchinukw wrote:It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

Our talent is what has carried us so far. Its what makes us so successful at youth levels where raw talent without additional development and organization is a lot more of a difference maker.

However at the highest level, talent is not enough. You need infrastructure, organizational stability, long term planning and execution, and of course tons of luck.

What I find really insightful is how much the level of football between big and small football countries has significantly closed. Can you imagine,...Croatia in a WC final! This should give hope to every other country that with the right planning and execution, they might duplicate Croatia's success.

TonyTheTigerKiller wrote:The major revelation in this World Cup is that there’s no substitute for investing in youth and developing a strong local league. That’s the only reason we’ve witnessed an all European World Cup semi-finals. Instead of doing what makes sense, our NFF is busy recruiting sub par players trained in European academies. For Nigeria to achieve football parity with the soccer powers, the NFF needs to refocus on grass roots development, a stable professional league and end over-reliance on foreign coaches


Cheers.

well you mentioned the European teams all making the semis, and then you condemned the NFF for recruiting Europeans to play for the SE, but these Europeans( recruits) were trained by Europeans

90% of French NT players play outside France.

You guys need to learn what it takes to build a championship team.

TonyTheTigerKiller wrote:The major revelation in this World Cup is that there’s no substitute for investing in youth and developing a strong local league. That’s the only reason we’ve witnessed an all European World Cup semi-finals. Instead of doing what makes sense, our NFF is busy recruiting sub par players trained in European academies. For Nigeria to achieve football parity with the soccer powers, the NFF needs to refocus on grass roots development, a stable professional league and end over-reliance on foreign coaches


Cheers.

TWO THINGS YOU NEED TO ADD:

Affordable equipment and infrastructure. As for a "local" league, I have a proposal for a domestic league and another for regional W. African league, either of which is capable of creating interest, develop players and coaches, keep top players at home and relegate TV viewing of European leagues to a distant second.
Bell

You rather need a REAL road map
Without street names the road map is a waste of time

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

Our talent is what has carried us so far. Its what makes us so successful at youth levels where raw talent without additional development and organization is a lot more of a difference maker.

However at the highest level, talent is not enough. You need infrastructure, organizational stability, long term planning and execution, and of course tons of luck.

What I find really insightful is how much the level of football between big and small football countries has significantly closed. Can you imagine,...Croatia in a WC final! This should give hope to every other country that with the right planning and execution, they might duplicate Croatia's success.

True. It is clear from Nigeria's performance that with a bit of continuously improving on things like preparations and regular friendlies we can get there eventually.

Get a good local coach give him same benefits Crooked Rohr is having.
Caf need to back her teams in big competition.
Please can you tell me what Croatia has done to their league?
France that 90 % of their players play outside France....

Believe it or not, i actually think the NFF is doing a good job with youth development. Our U15 and U17 teams actually play friendlies with other African youth teams, our U15 will be participating in a Youth tournament next month in Morocco. We have a pretty good scouting network at the NFF. The only problem is i do not know what kind of training the players undergo at U13 and U15 level.

Kabalega wrote:90% of French NT players play outside France.

You guys need to learn what it takes to build a championship team.

Ha, but they were found, groomed, and trained in France. Most of them were trained at Clairefontaine. They only moved abroad when they were already the finished article or close to the finished article.

Without a decent home league, we're dependent almost entirely now on foreign clubs for training our discovered young talent (that are just too good to be left in the decaying NPFL) and many of them fall by the wayside abroad.

cchinukw wrote:

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

Our talent is what has carried us so far. Its what makes us so successful at youth levels where raw talent without additional development and organization is a lot more of a difference maker.

However at the highest level, talent is not enough. You need infrastructure, organizational stability, long term planning and execution, and of course tons of luck.

What I find really insightful is how much the level of football between big and small football countries has significantly closed. Can you imagine,...Croatia in a WC final! This should give hope to every other country that with the right planning and execution, they might duplicate Croatia's success.

True. It is clear from Nigeria's performance that with a bit of continuously improving on things like preparations and regular friendlies we can get there eventually.

Its not going to happen overnight thats for sure. That is why I am against making any changes right now in the Super Eagles adminstration or coaching staff. For the first time in a long long time, we are finally doing things the right way. What we need is consistency and improvements of weak areas, not more overhauls which are usually very unpredictable and might end up being many steps backwards instead of forwards.

ogasir wrote:Believe it or not, i actually think the NFF is doing a good job with youth development. Our U15 and U17 teams actually play friendlies with other African youth teams, our U15 will be participating in a Youth tournament next month in Morocco. We have a pretty good scouting network at the NFF. The only problem is i do not know what kind of training the players undergo at U13 and U15 level.

Not to mention the LMC are trying to introduce an U16 league for all of the NPFL teams. Just having a somewhat stable football hierarchy is the easiest way to pick out the best individual players from the lesser ones, however I still feel the the most important aspect the NFF/LMC need to work together on is educating current and upcoming coaches on football, because they are the ones who'll be training our players at least for the most important phase of their football development

Bigpokey24 wrote:

TonyTheTigerKiller wrote:The major revelation in this World Cup is that there’s no substitute for investing in youth and developing a strong local league. That’s the only reason we’ve witnessed an all European World Cup semi-finals. Instead of doing what makes sense, our NFF is busy recruiting sub par players trained in European academies. For Nigeria to achieve football parity with the soccer powers, the NFF needs to refocus on grass roots development, a stable professional league and end over-reliance on foreign coaches


Cheers.

well you mentioned the European teams all making the semis, and then you condemned the NFF for recruiting Europeans to play for the SE, but these Europeans( recruits) were trained by Europeans

You somehow managed to miss the point. Did you see the phrase sub par? Do you think Brian Idowu would make the Russian C team


Cheers.

Orion wrote:

Kabalega wrote:90% of French NT players play outside France.

You guys need to learn what it takes to build a championship team.

Ha, but they were found, groomed, and trained in France. Most of them were trained at Clairefontaine. They only moved abroad when they were already the finished article or close to the finished article.

Without a decent home league, we're dependent almost entirely now on foreign clubs for training our discovered young talent (that are just too good to be left in the decaying NPFL) and many of them fall by the wayside abroad.

Not to mention, after a certain age (lets say 14), clubs or academies are not really able to instil certain fundamentals. They can mould some new habits, but many of the critical ones such as spatial awareness are hard to hardwire at that point.

To Kabalega.

We speak of the lack of Nigerian players at the top clubs in Europe, but this is largely a measure of where they are coming from, furthermore why do we speak about creating youth channels as if this is some roadtest and our job is to simply show that we are doing something. Are our U15s, U17s trained appropriately in the fundamentals?

When you see some of our full fledged players, as good as they can be, many of them lack some basic fundamentals till their testimonial match! They succeed in spite of it! And really, to become world class, you cannot lack in too many departments nowadays!

You want to build a team around philosophies and coaching instead of talents instilled with the fundamentals? The two are one and the same! Tactics, philosophies are not something you slap on, it works best when the players fit the system. Even in the past 15 years, many of Nigeria's footballers have even been unable to play Nigerian football! What an irony. The essence of Nigerian football, apart from the transition in general is wingplay! How many Nigerian footballers can consistently put a good cross in? But you think that simply improving the tactical outlook on the game will make us a world beater? BTW Iceland are NOT World Beaters! They are alright, but their ranking flatters them, and they can only play in one limited manner. They lack true quality and get by with compactness and set-pieces. At best we can say they are 'organized', at worst we say they play 'negative football'

Nigeria needs all the things that Kabalega proposes, but we need our players being taught the fundamentals at very early ages, perhaps some of that is helped by having more qualified coaches, but a lot of that is about the academies, the leagues as well.

This is why England are not dominant than Spain, I highly doubt that Spain has better footballing resources than England, or for better measure let us point to countries such as Croatia, Italy, France, Portugal, Greece etc. England's footballing infrastructure and reach is unprecedented. Their Philosophy is back to front and that is the problem, the reason the French and the Spanish dominate the English league is not because 'Any league will do', but because the English themselves lack the foresight to be as dominant in their own league as they should be!

While we all recognize the need for, vision, planning and discipline, one should not judge everything that happened in Russia due to the bad state of Nigerian football.

In terms of administration efficiency, this is probably our best wc yet. Talent wise and experience of the team is open for debate.
We should also note that son of the best organized teams with ruthless efficiencies, also pa ked their bags after the group stage.

The constant falling of a child is not sickness but the first stage of mobility freedom.

We shouldn't just come to the conclusion that things are bad because we didn't get out of the group stage. What were the good things and not so good things? Fix the bad and improve on the good.

Hiring a coach during qualifiers is not always the best. Now we have another 4 years to the next wc. Introduce fresh new talents that were left out of the last squad. Target the key areas that we lacked efficient personnel and lets keep improving

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

Our talent is what has carried us so far. Its what makes us so successful at youth levels where raw talent without additional development and organization is a lot more of a difference maker.

However at the highest level, talent is not enough. You need infrastructure, organizational stability, long term planning and execution, and of course tons of luck.

What I find really insightful is how much the level of football between big and small football countries has significantly closed. Can you imagine,...Croatia in a WC final! This should give hope to every other country that with the right planning and execution, they might duplicate Croatia's success.

True. It is clear from Nigeria's performance that with a bit of continuously improving on things like preparations and regular friendlies we can get there eventually.

Its not going to happen overnight thats for sure. That is why I am against making any changes right now in the Super Eagles adminstration or coaching staff. For the first time in a long long time, we are finally doing things the right way. What we need is consistency and improvements of weak areas, not more overhauls which are usually very unpredictable and might end up being many steps backwards instead of forwards.

The only thing I agree with is that it won’t happen overnight. Everythingelse, I disagree with vigorously. Consider that this team has unquestionably more talent than the 2014 team. They had more resources at their disposal and more time to prepare. That they didn’t perform as well as the 2014 team is a telling sign of serious managerial issues. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Rohr failed. Get someone who has the skill set and capacity to get the job done. If that ends up being a home-grown coach, so be it but do it now


Cheers.

TonyTheTigerKiller wrote:The major revelation in this World Cup is that there’s no substitute for investing in youth and developing a strong local league. That’s the only reason we’ve witnessed an all European World Cup semi-finals. Instead of doing what makes sense, our NFF is busy recruiting sub par players trained in European academies. For Nigeria to achieve football parity with the soccer powers, the NFF needs to refocus on grass roots development, a stable professional league and end over-reliance on foreign coaches


Cheers.

I doubt there's a universal template for success.
Like someone pointed out, the majority of the French squad play outside France.
I suspect the same goes for Brazil and Argentina.

Germany, probably supports your position, fair enough.
England are 100% domestic but if we are to go by public (Nigerian) sentiment, they are crap.

The Belgian local league is 'just okay' but not the greatest we have seen.
Croatia....I suspect maybe their first eleven are mostly FB but I may be wrong on that.
Mate will be able to clarify.

South Africa has what seems to be a well run local league but its not exactly producing an awe-inspiring Bafana Bafana.

What I really do not understand is the seemingly poor quality of our local coaches. Nigerians do not lack in any area of academic endeavour anywhere in the world, so maybe its a case of the wrong calibre of people going into coaching.
We recognise we have the raw talent, so where exactly is it going wrong if our local clubs are not even thriving on the continent?

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:

charlie wrote:

cchinukw wrote:It's a miracle that Nigeria has any measure of success at all internationally.

Our talent is what has carried us so far. Its what makes us so successful at youth levels where raw talent without additional development and organization is a lot more of a difference maker.

However at the highest level, talent is not enough. You need infrastructure, organizational stability, long term planning and execution, and of course tons of luck.

What I find really insightful is how much the level of football between big and small football countries has significantly closed. Can you imagine,...Croatia in a WC final! This should give hope to every other country that with the right planning and execution, they might duplicate Croatia's success.

True. It is clear from Nigeria's performance that with a bit of continuously improving on things like preparations and regular friendlies we can get there eventually.

Its not going to happen overnight thats for sure. That is why I am against making any changes right now in the Super Eagles adminstration or coaching staff. For the first time in a long long time, we are finally doing things the right way. What we need is consistency and improvements of weak areas, not more overhauls which are usually very unpredictable and might end up being many steps backwards instead of forwards.

The only thing I agree with is that it won’t happen overnight. Everythingelse, I disagree with vigorously. Consider that this team has unquestionably more talent than the 2014 team. They had more resources at their disposal and more time to prepare. That they didn’t perform as well as the 2014 team is a telling sign of serious managerial issues. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Rohr failed. Get someone who has the skill set and capacity to get the job done. If that ends up being a home-grown coach, so be it but do it now


Cheers.

@Bell, ideas and brainstorms, are what Nigerian football needs. What’s your proposition? Admittedly, not well versed on the NFL, that is further testament to the need for ideas.