Cybereagles

marko wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:25 pm 100% facts! Saudi has a decent local league, it shows, they were so disciplined for 90 minutes!

EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 8:53 pm

marko wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:25 pm 100% facts! Saudi has a decent local league, it shows, they were so disciplined for 90 minutes!

Funny that a Nigerian in the Saudi League would never play for SE but a Saudi player in the same league is good enough to beat Argentina .

akamoke wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:59 pm We are all complicit in this
Fan base is poor (or not strong from a marketing standpoint - I still remember in SA being drowned by Argies and Greek fans..in Africa)
Local leagues non existent
We are too impatient to let things develop holistically
We often react emotionally and not logically to adverse sitations

The football teams mirror our societies

Ghana score a second goal , most teams will run , grab the ball and aim for restart, our guy was celebrating - this also explains our mental toughness

I dont agree Africans are not good at football, as there are "Africans" featuring for Europe and doing well, what is missing is a structure (internal and external to the players) that is needed to unleish that fire, but it all starts at home

akamoke wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:59 pm We are all complicit in this
Fan base is poor (or not strong from a marketing standpoint - I still remember in SA being drowned by Argies and Greek fans..in Africa)
Local leagues non existent
We are too impatient to let things develop holistically
We often react emotionally and not logically to adverse sitations

The football teams mirror our societies

Ghana score a second goal , most teams will run , grab the ball and aim for restart, our guy was celebrating - this also explains our mental toughness

I dont agree Africans are not good at football, as there are "Africans" featuring for Europe and doing well, what is missing is a structure (internal and external to the players) that is needed to unleish that fire, but it all starts at home

felarey wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 10:21 pm

akamoke wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:59 pm We are all complicit in this
Fan base is poor (or not strong from a marketing standpoint - I still remember in SA being drowned by Argies and Greek fans..in Africa)
Local leagues non existent
We are too impatient to let things develop holistically
We often react emotionally and not logically to adverse sitations

The football teams mirror our societies

Ghana score a second goal , most teams will run , grab the ball and aim for restart, our guy was celebrating - this also explains our mental toughness

I dont agree Africans are not good at football, as there are "Africans" featuring for Europe and doing well, what is missing is a structure (internal and external to the players) that is needed to unleish that fire, but it all starts at home

Kpom. Today, all we saw in the stands for Ghana were their supporter's club (FA sponsored) and hardly a sprinkle of ghanian colours anywhere else. I saw exact same scenario myself in the stadium in Russia when the SE played. We're not good for business, we can't even fill seats at AFCON matches.

felarey wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 10:21 pm

akamoke wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:59 pm We are all complicit in this
Fan base is poor (or not strong from a marketing standpoint - I still remember in SA being drowned by Argies and Greek fans..in Africa)
Local leagues non existent
We are too impatient to let things develop holistically
We often react emotionally and not logically to adverse sitations

The football teams mirror our societies

Ghana score a second goal , most teams will run , grab the ball and aim for restart, our guy was celebrating - this also explains our mental toughness

I dont agree Africans are not good at football, as there are "Africans" featuring for Europe and doing well, what is missing is a structure (internal and external to the players) that is needed to unleish that fire, but it all starts at home

Kpom. Today, all we saw in the stands for Ghana were their supporter's club (FA sponsored) and hardly a sprinkle of ghanian colours anywhere else. I saw exact same scenario myself in the stadium in Russia when the SE played. We're not good for business, we can't even fill seats at AFCON matches.

Flex Swift wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:38 pm

EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 8:53 pm

marko wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:25 pm 100% facts! Saudi has a decent local league, it shows, they were so disciplined for 90 minutes!

Funny that a Nigerian in the Saudi League would never play for SE but a Saudi player in the same league is good enough to beat Argentina .

Didn’t Ighalo play for Nigeria while playing club football in the Saudi league????????

Coach wrote: ↑Thu Nov 24, 2022 9:44 pm Plateaued if not plummeted.

akamoke wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 6:53 am Hestonap

In my case I’m not asking anyone to do anything , just making it clear that we don’t have the fan base which shows football is not as important to us as other things like you mentioned above , which is cool but all I’m asking is for people to put that in perspective when judging the quality of our teams because you have no idea the psychological impact of the 12 th man

Someone mentioned Jamaica above , I would even add Brazil as countries with as serious economic problems but they especially Brazil have more football crazy fans and take the game more seriously than we do

Again it’s ok if we don’t prioritise football, just don’t expect miracles when we don’t show up at the world stage physically or figuratively

Coach wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:07 pm Forever rewinding back to the land before time. Africa has been left behind and doesn’t have the intention nor interest to catch up. Make weights henceforth, there purely to make up the numbers. Nothing else.

hestonap wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:49 pm Akamoke,

I truly believe this stuff is multifactorial but principally driven by economics.

You can’t separate the economic factor from this and it manifests itself in so many ways.

Firstly there is the direct affordability factor as I mentioned before. Please don’t blame the chap/citizen who places his sustenance and livelihood above the football factor.

There is the issue of logistics. Think back to the recent AFCON and how many hours/days it took for fans to navigate between Nigeria and Cameroon - 2 geographically close countries with horrendous transport links. Then consider even more distant countries on the continent and then ask how many can afford to travel to Qatar.

Compare that to Europe where you can get flights from the Uk to say Spain or Italy on a budget flight for less than £100 (still a fortune in equivalent terms for the average African).

I wont speak to the difficulties of travelling between African nations using a ‘foreign’ passport.

On the footballing side of things, I think folks forget how good in relative terms we had it in the 70s and 80s on the league front. Be it the Leventis, Abiola babes, NNB, insurance etc and never mind the historical heavy weights of Rangers, IICC etc.

Many lined up players that wore the GWG, footballing quality was great and no we didn’t have the impact of the internet and ready access to European leagues etc.

For those who can afford things, they will gravitate to a superior product. Even those who can’t, there is the aspiration factor. I may just chose to seat in my house in Lagos or Calabar or wherever and watch Chelsea or Arsenal play than greatly inconvenience myself to go watch a substandard game in rubbish pitches and dubious referees.

We truly underplay how much of an inferior product we have in terms of our local league. Please don’t despise folks if they choose not to partake.

My own direct experience, I still remember as a teenager attempting to go watch with my older neighbours Super Eagles games at Surulere. I get there and the rowdiness coupled with policemen cladding guns and whips randomly hitting out on fans. We turned back home to watch the games on TV rather than risk our lives.

Gast forward a few years later, I’m living in England and I can conveniently take my 8 year old son to got watch an EPL game and it’s like a proper day out beyond just the direct game experience. I know how many times the Eagles came to play friendlies in England and it was not such a great inconvenience to travel from Newcastle to London to watch them play.

Moral of the story, we don’t have the financial or economic muscle to compete. We have an inferior product that is openly in competition’ with world class opposition.

Guess what folks will vote with their feet. Whether rich one’s that fly out on a weekend to go watch Arsenal in London from Nigeria or the not so rich one’s that will sit back and watch such games on their computer streams etc.

The Japanese, Americans, South Korea have the financial and economic muscle to build decent leagues. They end up raising the standard if they’re local game and it’s no surprise that a selection of their players invariably rise to the top and are attracted by top European leagues.

The average Nigerian player who has the opportunity to play outside our shores gravitated to Turkey or Vietnam etc. why - few have the privilege of thinking in abstract terms about ‘becoming a better player’, they want their bottom line settled first. Like most in the diaspora, they have family commitments to cater to.

I can say so much but it’s just too painful to relieve stuff. I don’t know how closely you followed the Nigerian teams of the 1990s. I remember very clearly reading an interview Clemens Westerhof gave to complete football after Senegal 92. He spoke about how he went to a football kitting store can’t remember if this was in Faro or Papendal basically trying ti source for kits for the Eagles and he saw a photograph of the Eagles on the wall. He came back asking the FA why don’t we have a kit contract. I remember him talking along the lines of sponsorships for the Eagles. If my memory serves me right 1994 was the first time in Tunisia Nigeria had a kit contract. Prior to then it was not the case. How the #$% did no one think about stuff like that for the donkey years we had been playing football ? It took some white dude to force that to our attention.

Here is my summary, once again, our football is a microcosm of our society. From poor funding to corruption to brain drain amongst many other factors, we do not have the environment to allow for growth and for things to thrive.

You put out the product of such a system against that of a functional system, why are we acting surprised about the outcome?

I’m just going to put an observation out here. I speak as a Nigerian and I bet you this probably applies to most African peoples. We have not shown ourselves to be peoples that apply attention ti details. We have not shown ourselves capable of building and maintaining stuff. Our culture is not one of consistence and doing the simple things right. Look at our roads, our buildings, our institutions. Our football and sports will mirror this stuff.

Football and sports generally are meant to be fun but you and I know this stuff is so much more bigger than amateur hour. It is a financial and economic thing.

maceo4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:09 pm

Coach wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:07 pm Forever rewinding back to the land before time. Africa has been left behind and doesn’t have the intention nor interest to catch up. Make weights henceforth, there purely to make up the numbers. Nothing else.

Sounds about right…but we keep hope alive lol…

airwolex wrote: ↑Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:24 pm Iran just beat Wales and now have 3 points and are second in the group. You guys have been watching football for years and still doing this knee-jerk thing? Let's see how the group stages pan out before we start the wailing.