July 17, (THEWILL) – The publication of a long list of nominees for continental football awards by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on Thursday, June 30, 2022 did not augur well for the football community in Nigeria, especially in the men’s segment. The list for the 2022 CAF Awards in the men’s game had six categories with about 80 nominees and Nigeria, which used to exhibit strength in numbers in the categories could only manage two nominations. Nantes’ Simon Moses was nominated in the Player of the Year category, while Akinkunmi Amoo of FC Copenhagen had a nomination in the Young Player of the Year category.
By implication, there were no other players of Nigerian origin found worthy enough in the season that just ended to earn a place in those two categories and these three other categories: Interclub Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, Club of the Year and, with the country’s poor showing at the year’s TotalEnergies 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, there was no surprise that Nigeria was not nominated in the National Team of the Year category as well.
Indeed, while the country’s football pedigree has been on a decline in recent times from the dizzying heights of the 1990s, the reverse has been the case on the continent as other countries have quickly worked assiduously to fill that vacuum.
When nominations in all the categories are computed, a clearer picture emerges of where contemporary footballing strength lies on the continent. Morocco, powered by its local clubs’ excellence in CAF Competitions, led with 14 nominations, followed by the AFCON finalists Senegal and Egypt with eight nominations each. Burkina Faso and Mali had five apiece, while the Gambia, Guinea, Tunisia and Cameroon all had four nominations. And, Nigeria could only muster just two.
There is a glaring sense of weighed benefits granted to players that particularly distinguished themselves in continental competitions this year and it is to be expected, given that it is a CAF-led reward process, but it has not always been that way. Those who question the exclusion of some names from the long list have a reason to be suspect of CAF’s criteria for inclusion.
The most eyebrow-raising omission was Napoli’s Victor Osimhen. The striker’s glowing performances for the Naples side saw them contest strongly for the Scudetto in Serie A, the Europa in Europe and qualify for next season’s UEFA Champions League to the pleasure of team manager Luciano Spalletti, who never stopped singing Osimhen’s praises at every opportunity. So brilliant was the 23-year-old that his displays earned him the Italian Serie A Most Valuable Player (MVP) for footballers aged 23 and under.
Then, there is the Belgian League and Racing Genk’s Cyriel Dessers, who spent the last season on loan at Feyenoord in the Eredivisie, the top flight Dutch League. He was largely instrumental in seeing Feyenoord reach the final of the maiden edition of the UEFA Europa Conference League, their first-ever European final appearance in 20 years. The striker scored 10 goals in 11 matches to take Feyenoord to the final of the Europa Conference League and a place in Feyenoord’s record books, as no striker had ever scored double figures for the Dutch side in any European competition, a significant milestone for a club boasting a historical pedigree of some of Europe’s excellent strikers, such as Pierre van Hooijdonk, who had the previous record of nine, Dirk Kuijt, Harry Bild, and Robin van Persie. Dessers’ brace against Ligue 1 side Olympique Marseille in the first leg of their Conference League semi-finals and spectacular match-winning performance earned him the UEFA Conference League Player of the Week award and his double made him the first player in the newly formed Conference League to score 10 goals. The Nigerian forward finished the competition as the leading scorer and was recognised by UEFA for that accomplishment.
Yet, winning the Best Young Player Award in Serie A, one of the top five leagues in Europe, in the case of Osimhen, and winning the UEFA Highest Goal-scorer Award for the Conference League, in Dessers’ case, were both insufficient for at the very least, a recognition from CAF in the long list of nominees for the top award, Player of the Year, in the men’s segment. There is the caveat to keep in mind while querying the manner of their exclusion from CAF’s long list. Neither player, of the two deserving examples above, were part of Nigeria’s Super Eagles’ squad that featured at the AFCON in Cameroon earlier this year.
While Osimhen was getting back to fitness after his facial surgery and contracted COVID-19 in the build up to the tournament, which effectively ruled him out, Dessers was not even extended an invitation to participate. Interim coach, Augustine Eguavoen, relied on the provisional list submitted by sacked coach Gernot Rohr and left out Dessers, even though the team needed tested goal-scorers.
When queried about not bringing in Dessers, Eguavoen excused himself poorly, claiming that he was yet to witness the former Heracles attacker in action and that he would like to get a better look at him before including him in his selection.
As Nigeria made an abysmal showing in the competition’s knockout stage, after emerging as the best team from the Group stage in the absence of players, such as Osimhen and Dessers, on the team selection, it must have been to CAF’s discretionary implementation of the cognate legalities that exist in determining who is nominated and who is not. Even if, for the year in question, two of Africa’s best in the Senegalese Sadio Mane, now of Bayern Munich, and Egypt’s Mohamed Salah of Liverpool, helped their respective countries to reach the final before Egypt buckled during the ensuing penalty shootouts, it will not be the first time that the Federation has stepped beyond outstanding performances during AFCON to reward the best player for the year.
In 2013, the Ivorian Yaya Toure was named, beating the overwhelming favourite, Nigeria’s John Obi Mikel, despite the Super Eagles’ AFCON feat and Mikel’s commanding display. After beating Cote d’Ivoire to the trophy, Nigeria dominated that award ceremony in Lagos and won virtually everything except the biggest prize on the night to the disappointment of many.
When Emmanuel Adebayor won the CAF Player of the Year award in 2008, he scored 24 English Premier League goals, to help sustain Arsenal’s title hopes. He achieved the highest individual return of his professional career with a total score of 30 in all competitions. Despite this outstanding individual achievement, he could not help Togo qualify for the 2008 AFCON. At that tournament, Mohamed Aboutreika was sensational throughout and helped Egypt to their sixth continental title with a 1-0 final victory against Cameroon.
Due to Aboutreika’s MVP performance, he was the clear favourite to win the Best Player Award, but CAF decided to go with the more well-known and famous Adebayor, who did not play the AFCON. It begs the question of the criteria applied in not only deciding who makes the long list, or the short one, but who eventually takes home the prize because by Monday, June 11, there was no Nigerian anywhere in the shortlist after the initial nominees were trimmed down.
The responsibility for this obvious decline in Nigeria’s footballing fortune is due to poor sports administration in the country. The imbroglio over firing Rohr and the subsequent blowout that followed all the way to an embarrassing exit from AFCON present a vivid example of the seeming ad hoc manner with which sports is run in the country, in general, and the way football is going precipitously off the cliff.
Although followers of the game in Nigeria queried Rohr’s matches and believed the German was unqualified to handle the Super Eagles, they expected the Nigeria Football Federation to act expeditiously and get another coach for the team before crucial games like the qualifiers for AFCON and the World Cup.
Just as fans were settling for Rohr the NFF sacked him and on the eve of the commencement of the biggest football showpiece on the continent, Eguavoen was named as Technical Adviser to act on an interim basis as the NFF went in search of a substantive coach.
After liaising with AS Roma’s iconic manager, Jose Mourinho and his previous arch-rival and now FIFA official, Arsene Wenger, as they claimed, a Portuguese, Jose Peseiro, was announced as Nigeria’s new coach. Due to how close it was to AFCON, he was to go with Eguavoen and the squad to observe and contribute from the sidelines. Thereafter, Eguavoen would hand over to Peseiro to take over and work towards set targets and goals, only for Eguavoen to impress during his stint as coach to make the undecided federation renege on the appointment of Peseiro and make Eguavoen permanent coach. It took failing to qualify the country for the World Cup over two legs against Ghana to bring the axe on the Eguavoen gamble and send the NFF back into coach hunting behaviour after an apology to Nigerians for failing to qualify for Qatar 2022. At the end of this unfortunate series of rigmarole, the NFF went crawling back to beg Peseiro to accept its offer.
This is but a smidgeon of an inkling of what goes on in the country’s sports administration. It is frustrating for many athletes and footballers to find that their sports federation is not interested in taking care of them. Internal wrangling often means that the very duties and responsibilities that require the attention of these administrators are neglected until it snowballs into an avalanche that is inescapable and will take many along with it. For the most part, the sportsmen and women take the brunt and more often than not, their performances reflect this shoddiness to the embarrassment of the athletes and the country, in the same way that success applies.
While it is incumbent on the football players to up their game for successes that can accrue to them if they excel, sports administration also has to wake up to making the best of our sportsmen and women even better with support, organisation, financing and preparations at all levels of football including from inter-house sports to the NUGA Games, from club football in the NPFL to home-based Eagles and from the Super Eagles to the Super Falcons to restore the glory days of Nigerian excellence in football.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
