Please let's put this home based talk to bed now

[danfo driver]

...I know many were sitting on the edge of the seats, couches, or dem beds praying feverishly for one of the local home based player screw up so they can say, "I told you so"

Yea, and some of you - especially you - a thief and a criminal, was counting the cowries you received from selling your country to the highest bidder, by pushing your client into the national team. Devilish Thief!

[aruako1]

I mean look no further than your based RB in the NPFL who got tossed around like a rag-doll by both the Ghanaian and Jamaican wingers, all the goals we conceded in this competition all came from Sodiq's side. He's a decent player to have around for CHAN tournaments but never should a player like that be anywhere near the NT. The home based project had a chance to prove its argument in a low pressure competition and yet failed again to deliver. Enough of it now.

I think the argument is not in the poor performance of Sodiq (anyone can have a bad game or even a bad run of games), but in the transformation of Benjamin Fredericks.
We talk about a footballer’s ‘education’ and we think say na beans.

Fredericks hasn’t even broken into the full senior side at his club yet, but the difference is clear.
It may be early days. He might even be an exceptional one-off case. But the way the local player evangelists dismiss the less-obvious shortcomings of our local league, e.g. their poor football education (both on and off the pitch) is both baffling and tiring.

There’s a reason foreign scouts are creaming off our young talent rather than our NPFL ‘stars’. It’s because they are malleable. The last NPFL star that got transferred directly abroad, made it big and came back to positively impact the Super Eagles was a very young Ahmed Musa all those years ago.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but even if so, how many are they?

I liken it to driving for years in Nigeria and then coming to do a UK driving test after some ‘refresher’ driving lessons here. You fail it once, twice, three times and you wonder why. After all you’ve been driving ‘for years’.
Meanwhile, someone else who has never driven before comes over, does the lessons and passes the test first time.
You are baffled, but there’s a reason.

I don’t blame the players. The whole system needs a total overhaul. Sodiq has not done himself any favours but he’s not a ‘bad’ footballer like that and I don’t blame him.
I blame all those that refuse to acknowledge the quality of the league a player plays in, the quality of opposition he plays with and against week after week, and the quality of sustained coaching he receives at his club over a period of time.

It’s a no brainer.
Welcome Benjamin Fredericks!

Yeah. Like Mba and Oboabona were playing Barcelona every week when they won the AFCON. All our AFCON squads since they won it have been overwhelmingly foreign based. The problem is with the NFF and they have not gotten the best out of all our players, irrespective of their place of residence. An organised NFF would have see quality homebased talent make the squad from time to time. Right now the homebased invitations follow an erratic pattern.

On Sodiq, who seems to have become the newest scapegoat, he is not bad as an attacking wingback but will struggle in a 4 man defence.