Nigeria’s failure at the World Cup has to do with issues off the field- Oliseh
Oliseh, 47, is also all too aware that in Africa, issues of organisation and leadership in football are frequently dogged by political interference
Former Super Eagles player and manager Sunday Oliseh has identified weak management rather than talents as the main why Nigeria and other African countries fail at the FIFA World Cup in an interview with The Times.
For Oliseh who played in two World Cups for Nigeria and scored a winning goal against Spain in 1998, the frustration is that the root cause of this failure has more to do with issues off the pitch than on it.
“The qualities to win the World Cup, the talent, is there. But to win the World Cup, you must plan years in advance,” he says. “And you need solid organisation and discipline to be able to carry that out. You must follow that track, you cannot skate off it. And that is something for us as Africans, we have struggled with — we have problems as regards the organisational aspects. And the disciplinary aspect. That is what is really holding us back.”
Oliseh was part of the Nigeria team that won the 1996 Olympic football title, and the former Ajax and Borussia Dortmund midfielder thinks that success should offer a template for African teams competing at the highest level.
“My generation broke barriers,” he says. “We became the first African nation to win a senior world competition — the Olympics in Atlanta. That was the 100th anniversary of the Olympics and the soccer gold medal was highly sought after. Brazil came in with all their superstars — Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos — and so did Argentina.
“We wanted it also and we did something that had never been done by Africans before — the players took control, and we decided among ourselves we were going to approach the tournament with the utmost discipline. We decided to do things the way we would at our clubs in Europe. So that meant, for example, if training was at 10 o’clock, we were all in the changing room by 9.30.”
Oliseh, 47, is also all too aware that in Africa, issues of organisation and leadership in football are frequently dogged by political interference.
“When the Germans decide that, ‘OK, it’s been too long without World Cup success, it’s time for us to win it’, they sit down, they launch a project that takes up to maybe eight years,” he says. “They identify a coach, talents and they keep themselves focused and on track.
“But in Africa we don’t have that kind of leadership. How is it you cannot head up a hospital if you are not a doctor but in football, the heads of the association are political appointments with no background or knowledge of the game? And [that person] has to now decide who’s going to be the team manager and everything. It’s horrifying actually.”
Which is not to say that the players themselves are exempt from blame. Oliseh, now 47, thinks they have needed to be more ambitious. As someone who has not only played for the Nigerian national team but also managed it in the recent past, he has seen the issues at first hand.
“In the past the majority of African sides went to the World Cup just thinking, ‘let’s just show ourselves’,” he says. Seeing the tournament as a shop window to earn a lucrative move to a top club in Europe.
Oliseh’s point about players wanting to impress European clubs may be outdated though. The truth is that for many players in Qatar in December there is no need to worry about getting a move to Europe — they are already there. The likes of Sadio Mané, Riyad Mahrez, Edouard Mendy and Mohamed Salah are the poster boys for the continent.
The talent drain has seriously undermined standards in Africa — Nigeria, for instance, is estimated to have at least 500 players at clubs outside of its borders, leaving Nigerian club football weak and ineffective and now largely ignored inside the country, where watching the Premier League or La Liga on satellite television is how fans consume their football — but has strengthened the national teams.
Especially as those national teams now forage through the diaspora for ready-made talent; players of African heritage, such as Mahrez and Mendy born and brought up in Europe, schooled at European clubs and with better basic development than their compatriots from Africa.
