Eizzy003:
I just da laugh most of wanna for this thread, they sentiments and double standard wer wanna da practice ehhh, I remember last week most of you guys here wer bashing and insulting Hudson Odoi simply because he said he was only going to play for Ghana after the world cup qualifiers, most of you here insulted him and called him glory hunter, that if he were to be a Nigerian you guys will never allow him into the team, cos he doesn't want to suffer with the team during qualifiers but he wants to enjoy in the world cup.
Now Olise has said the same thing (that he is going to play for the SE after the qualifiers)
and you guys are here praising him for making a right decision, for accepting to switch blah blah blah.
Mak wanna remember sa what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

JohnBullMySon:
Ability to read the game and know the right tactics to apply is very important at the highest level.

TheGoodJoe:


All you are saying here does not change the point. The point is simple. Anyone bigger than the team should be given a chance to stay bigger than the team with his club. I do not care whether family or friends pressured him. That is his business. What matters is that they are not ready and we should focus on those eager to jump on the plane to play for us.

I do not care if he will play AFCON qualifiers or not. Olise's passion should be for Nigeria to make the world cup and he should be willing to do all he can to help Nigeria make the world cup.

He is showing he does not care if we make it to the world cup or not. All he cares about is that if we make it, we should call him to benefit from the glamour of playing on such a stage.

Eguavoen and Amunike should shut that guy out of the team. For now. He should try next year if he is ready, wait for Algeria, and enjoy his stardom in Crystal Palace.

jihday:
when will the grouping be done? How will teams going to the World Cup prepare if they’ll be busy playing Lesotho instead of Europeans or South American teams?

JohnBullMySon:
I feel you. But sincerely, you're being too utopian and very unrealistic. We simply can't adopt this method you're talking about. Not now at least. Other African countries are doing the same and we have to be proactive to ensure our place at the very top. In fact that's what will make others eager to play for us the more. If we get left behind, we fall so badly no one would respect the SE again. The days of having to beg single nationality players to honor call ups and behave well in camp will simply return. Corps in the US scout and steal extraordinary employees from competitors with promises of higher pay. As a Stanford or MIT undergrad, you get scouted right in the university. Shouldn't those companies respect themselves and wait for them to apply? No they won't because if they sit back, their competitors will grab them and create advantage.

Its like starting up a business and then expect people to start patronizing you because they love you. You have to do well at first to organically attract people bro. Very few persons will just want to play for a poorer team, unless they have no choice. These players don't prefer England just because they were born there. Its because of the talents and higher chances of international success with their national team.

Don't pretend like we have a good system right now that trains and brings out talents on regular basis. Osimhen and Chukwueze are just rarities that have more to do with sheer talent than training. Look at the league for instance, it keeps on dwindling. Now we cannot get or sustain any TV broadcast, sponsorships since the Southies left. Before we can get to a decent level in football development, 8 to 9 figures USD must be spent, I tell you. Where will the NFF get that amount, before we begin talking about how long it takes?

Finally, as a country, we need to fully engage our diaspora community to grow beyond the average African country. We have a large one currently, and we must take advantage of it. Both to grow our football, and to secure talents with foreign exposure. Beyond football, our large community gives us unfair advantages in several other areas too. Someone like Doherty has been campaigning for talents born abroad to play for us, yet has attracted a lot of investment into football development in Nigeria, notably with Southampton.

The two can go together.

Mousup40:
yeah,a lot of people on this thread are hypocrites, they feed on blatant hypocrisy

andrewbaba44:


I was the person who bashes odoi and I am yet to defend Olise because I need to confirm the News first

So make una Dey cool down

elyte89:
A nation can approach a player as many times as possible thru his agent or to d player directly wout begging....approach and beg are two different stuffs...maybe na where d thegoodjoe dey get am wrong

charlesemeka85:
Gernot Rohr was surprised to hear that his former pupil Valentine Ozornwafor lost consciousness twice on the pitch during RSC Charleroi's 3-0 defeat to Royale Union Saint Gilloise on Saturday night.

The former Nigeria coach has promised to get in touch with Ozornwafor to express his sympathy after the unfortunate incident that saw the central defender stretchered off just before the end of the first half.

Rohr has close ties with Ozornwafor's agency, DW Sports Management and handed him a call-up for a friendly against Egypt in March 2019.

The former Enyimba star made his senior debut off the bench against Cameroon on June 4, 2021 and four days later, was one of the standout players in a goalless draw with the Indomitable Lions.

"I'm going to hear from him directly. It's unfortunate. Valentine is an adorable boy. He is a man of integrity with undeniable human qualities," Rohr told Belgian newspaper L'Avenir.

Ozornwafor's last squad involvement for the Super Eagles was in their 2022 World Cup qualifier against Cape Verde five months ago.

TheGoodJoe:


That should stop. We should have a policy that they reach out to us. We should focus more on youth development. We can raise a mean squad if we channel much effort to keep raising high-grade players from the youth level. We raised Ndidi, Iheanacho, Osimhen, Omeruo, Awoniyi, Isaac Success, Chidera Ejuke, etc from the youth grade system. If we channel funds and groom our coaches to make our scouting and development at this level proper, we can keep raising quality players.

Coupled with any foreign-born with the passion to reach out t o us.

As for any homegrown player that wants to focus on his career, we should give him full support by allowing him to focus on his club footie.

Our focus should lie on those that want to play for us. Whether foreign, or home grown.

We need the likes of Osimhen that was ready to defy odds with his club to play for us. Mikel went against Conte to join the Olympic teams. These are players with passion.

Enough of all these red carpet treatment.

Kog45:
Oga,hmmmm I got your point,no red carpet abi....but the same Mikel refused to play 2008 Olympics.

Kog45:
Oga,hmmmm I got your point,no red carpet abi....but the same Mikel refused to play 2008 Olympics.

elyte89:
A nation can approach a player as many times as possible thru his agent or to d player directly wout begging....approach and beg are two different stuffs...maybe na where d thegoodjoe dey get am wrong

TheGoodJoe:


I did not get anything wrong. I did not say close the door to the player but keep an open door policy. Any time the player is ready, he can reach out and get into the team. Stop approaching the player to convince. The door is open for him. If he wants to enter, he is free to enter. If he does not want to, good luck to him.

#StopTheRedCarpetTreatment

JohnBullMySon:
I feel you. But sincerely, you're being too utopian and very unrealistic. We simply can't adopt this method you're talking about. Not now at least. Other African countries are doing the same and we have to be proactive to ensure our place at the very top. In fact that's what will make others eager to play for us the more. If we get left behind, we fall so badly no one would respect the SE again. The days of having to beg single nationality players to honor call ups and behave well in camp will simply return. Corps in the US scout and steal extraordinary employees from competitors with promises of higher pay. As a Stanford or MIT undergrad, you get scouted right in the university. Shouldn't those companies respect themselves and wait for them to apply? No they won't because if they sit back, their competitors will grab them and create advantage.

Its like starting up a business and then expect people to start patronizing you because they love you. You have to do well at first to organically attract people bro. Very few persons will just want to play for a poorer team, unless they have no choice. These players don't prefer England just because they were born there. Its because of the talents and higher chances of international success with their national team.

Don't pretend like we have a good system right now that trains and brings out talents on regular basis. Osimhen and Chukwueze are just rarities that have more to do with sheer talent than training. Look at the league for instance, it keeps on dwindling. Now we cannot get or sustain any TV broadcast, sponsorships since the Southies left. Before we can get to a decent level in football development, 8 to 9 figures USD must be spent, I tell you. Where will the NFF get that amount, before we begin talking about how long it takes?

Finally, as a country, we need to fully engage our diaspora community to grow beyond the average African country. We have a large one currently, and we must take advantage of it. Both to grow our football, and to secure talents with foreign exposure. Beyond football, our large community gives us unfair advantages in several other areas too. Someone like Doherty has been campaigning for talents born abroad to play for us, yet has attracted a lot of investment into football development in Nigeria, notably with Southampton.

The two can go together.

BOOOMNAIJA:

Someone said Umar Sadiq is better than osimhen

charlesemeka85:
open door policy? U never ready then

The same open door policy the likes of Senegal,Morocco,Algeria,England,France,Italy,Germany operates when capping these kids abi?

This our entitlement mentality is very common and evident in every one of us

Keep the door open and expect them to come approach you to play for you when their country of birth FA are already monitoring their progress as well as pencilled them down for future engagements

If your suggestion is applied by the nff na em be say na 2nd and 3rd division players go Dey rush the enter the door cus many of them doesn’t hv what it takes talent wise to rep other nations their hv links to

It is the duty of the nff and coaches to reach out to this kids and make them know how important they will be to the team as well as the gains in repping us, even if they say they need time the door shouldn’t be shut at them

It’s even better when they wholeheartedly make up their mind to play for us which will make them dedicated to the course of the team

Adarabioyo who made it known totally that he hopes to play for England later rescinds his decision and reach out to the nff that he is ready to rep us so the nff should shut the door on him just because his first preference was his country of birth England?

jihday:
beating Argentina and Brazil in 96 is short term, the usefulness of that great Brazil squad was eventually seen by everybody. Just 2 years after, they made World Cup final before winning it in the next edition. Our own players? By the time 2002 came around a bunch of them were already declining. Supreme talent will always trump players who are just in form anytime any day

TheGoodJoe:


By the way, the same Mikel lost his place at Chelsea due to his devotion to play in the Olympics.

charlesemeka85:
he didn’t say it verbatim but his post made it clear that he is not sold out on begging this players to rep us when we can get dedicated ones here

Kog45:
Sir,Mikel came to Rio Olympics cos it was cleared he was not in Conte plan...forget media talks.It was cleared to Siasia and Mikel

TheGoodJoe:


It is not media talk. If Moses had come, Conte would have treated him the same way.

Kog45:
Sir,Mikel came to Rio Olympics cos it was cleared he was not in Conte plan...forget media talks.It was cleared to Siasia and Mikel

TheGoodJoe:


Cameroon without the best went somewhere. Nigeria without the best went somewhere. You are the one hiding from Reality.

Stop making false statement. No one in this thread talked about gathering carpenters. You are just trying to make stuff up to sound cool.

M7even:



The gap then wasn't much. I mean the gap between footballing African nations and their counterparts in Europe and South America

Today there is a growing gap, we talk about how football is no longer an art anymore, but rather scientific. This simply reality will leave many African countries struggling to meet up with their footballing counterpart nations from other continent.

Someone here said the era of finding a Maradona at Ajegunle is gone. Players are properly groomed in this European academy with a watchful eyes on everything they do from nutrition(think about Nigeria where people never see better food chop na him you won dey select diet for one young football player), psychologist (who are able to understand a players mental health and motivate them), to other advanced scientific calculations that requires even academic experts to help coordinate( Liverpool employed a physics professor from Oxford to make some analysis regarding how Salah would fit into Liverpool before signing him)


Europe has set the standard. Even South America with more natural talents than Africa understands this.

When was the last time a south American team won the world cup? It's not about talents anymore.
Argentina and Brazil at the early 2000s will not have players in lower teams in Europe playing for them, but today they have players from Aston Villa, Everton, Brighton &Hove etc. What does that tell you?

Today's Footballing African nations lacks the financial capacity to compete with the European. Although we do produce talents, but it's not just about talent. look no further than one of the most talented player from the under 17 recently in the person of Kelechi Iheanacho. He was so gifted with his natural abilities but as he has advanced , we can see his shortfalls sometimes as regards his ball control that gets one wondering how and why and I could understand him due to his trajectory of hard times growing up, he could have been better at this in a much more stable environment, but let's even be grateful that his skills were good enough to allow him join the under 17 and lets assume that he didn't have to pay bribes to NFF officials to be chosen . this are the sort of problems we keep facing here.

And I dare say that we can't catch up today or tomorrow.

I've lost interest in CAF champions league as a Nigerian because we don't have any Enyimba structured team anymore . Egypt (North Africa) and South Africa have better leagues than Cameroon, Nigeria, ivory coast, Senegal and a host of other west African nations. While these west African nations boast of talents yet economic struggles and corruption will not allow for a fully utilized collection of players from the local leagues

jihday:
aside from that, in 2008 he was a 21YO player who was just starting so he prioritize his club career but in 2016 he was almost 30 and had won all that can be won even if he was dropped by Chelsea he can always get another club he had nothing to prove to anybody again.