fabio wrote:
Damunk wrote:
You, in all honesty, are an example of the typical Nigerian that has no stomach for pain. Your inflexible approach to results and results alone demonstrates the difficulty Nigeria will have utilizing local talents that are getting their first exposure to world-class opposition and struggling to perform both technically and psychologically at that level. You strongly believe that there is ''nothing to learn'' by players performing on the ultimate world stage (WC) for the very first time, simply because they make the final list of the Nigerian national team.
Please kindly allow me to address the assumption made above with empirical evidence and duly rest my case.
With all pleasure.
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I have not advocated an inflexible approach to results and results alone. Let's go back to History. Nigeria won the Nations Cup in 94 because of extensive work done on scouting HB players by the then coach players like Finidi, Amokachi and Oliseh were 'discovered'.
Fabio, that was a long, long time ago. Things were very different then. The game has evolved. The forces at play have changed. Today, the likes of Finidi (such a high-quality player) are out of the country before they even get to play senior club football. He was 22 when he went to Ajax and had already been playing for the SE for two years.
Your example of Oliseh is flawed because he had already been out of the country for about 3 years playing in Belgium before the SE 'discovered' him. He left at 16/17 according to his Wiki records.
Same with Amokachi was out of the country at age 18, the same year he got his first SE call-up in 1990. Which came first is academic, but it wouldn't have been by more than a few months, whichever way.
So my point is that even then, our very best were being creamed off pretty early and were not HBs in '94 as you claim. Its even worse today.
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The 2013 winning team by Keshi. Keshi was lampooned and called names because he developed a team of mostly home based player, playing what was term meaningless friendly matches... The result was Nations cup victory. You are free to do a search on this board, If I was one of those who attacked Keshi Home Based players team. Please be free to share the results with everyone.
I know you are an honest man and don't lie. So its a case of your memory failing you. You have convinced yourself that your facts are accurate, but they are not.
Of Keshi's 23-man squad to the 2013 AFCON, only 6 were home-based: Azubuike (WW), Mba, Uzoenyi and Agbim (ER), Oboabona (SS) and Gabriel (K Pillars). The other 17 were foreign-based. So maybe you were attacked for defending Keshi's choice of Agbim, Gabriel and Uzoenyi who were all very questionable inclusions.
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I can't speak about the 1980 team, because I was not yet born.
FB-players back then were a novelty. Tunji Banjo, John Chidozie and later Okwaraji were all pioneers (though none of them were in the 1980 squad).
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I strongly believe and I will stand by the statement on ''nothing to learn''. You don't go to the WC to learn, you go and compete, because you earned. Yes, there will be lessons learnt both individually (players) and organisation. If your sole aim is to go to the WC with young players "to learn" you have no business in the WC, you had 4 years of preparation. You are competing against elite players in the highest level of international football and you are there to learn, really. This is a once in a life time opportunity.
Learning and competing are not mutually exclusive and the reason why you guys made a huge deal about Rohr's "learning' statement is because you were (like many others) terribly disappointed by the outcome of the 2018 WC campaign and you needed to let out all your frustration.
Even semi-finalist Gareth Southgate (England Mgr) recently stated something similar about achieving beyond reasonable expectations and that his boys were still learning to get better. But you guys wanted (probably still want) Rohr out which is exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned our intolerance to 'pain'.
Like I said, speak to Ekong, Ndidi, Balogun, Iwobi, Etebo, Uzoho, Iheanacho, Ogu or Ebuehi and see whether ''learning" will not be part of their assessment of their 2018 WC experience.
In fact, what does "experience' imply, if not the having benefitted from learning from the very best players in the world?
Its a nonsensical argument to say they're not there to learn.
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I am not against spreading the net as wide as possible for players, I just want a level playing field for everyone, not where we are told and it's official policy that no HB players will make the SE. That is wrong.
I am totally with you on this, though I am not sure I read anywhere Pinnick claimed "no HB players would make the SE."
But maybe you can enlighten me on that.
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