Nigeria will miss old schoolmaster

Ian Chadband13 April 2012

When the old schoolmaster, Chief Festus Onigbinde, finally cajoled star pupil Jay JayOkocha to knuckle down to his homework, it sadly came a bit too late for Nigeria to pass their World Cup examination here in Japan.

Yet as they prepare for what looks set to be their farewell to the national team in Osaka tomorrow, the coach and his captain believe they can still successfully negotiate one final test which will prove that a new generation of fledgling Super Eagles are ready to soar.

In theory, they have nothing to play for; in practice, the talons will be out for England. We will miss Onigbinde, and so may Nigeria. An amiably eccentric 64-year-old ex-teacher with a penchant for schoolmasterly pearls of wisdom, the widespread consensus, even back in Lagos where the wails of misery at their exit apparently still resound, is that he did his best to turn around a team in utter disarray after all the scandals and in-fighting which marked their African Nations Cup exit.

Yet doing your best in Nigerian football is not enough. Never mind that they were thrown into the competition's toughest group, Onigbinde's demanding compatriots still expected more.

Four months, as defender Taribo West admitted here, was simply not long enough to bed in a completely new team.

So, win or lose in the Nagai Stadium tomorrow, all the signs from the Nigerian sports ministry are that the chief will be thanked for his firefighter's effort and then be asked to make way for a foreign appointment.

That would be harsh. For he was brave, getting rid of star players like Finidi George and Sunday Oliseh because he believed they were disruptive elements; he was ambitious, blooding young, hungry players in their place; and, when I visited their base at Kanagawa, players enthused about how his concentration on discipline had inspired a new sense of direction and spirit in the ranks.

Best of all, though, was how he helped reinvent his most gifted if mercurial player, Okocha. The playmaker had looked demotivated and disinterested during the African Nations in Mali.

Yet trusted with the captain's armband by Onigbinde, he has repaid the faith by demonstrating a skill and commitment which, even in defeat, has made him one of the most attractive things to behold in this World Cup.

With Kanu sidelined by injury, no one poses more of a threat to England's hopes of progressing.

Okocha's range of passing, vision and unpredictability, Sven-Goran Eriksson noted, still makes him a special player and, on his last appearance in the green, he sounds determined to leave us with a memory of his sublime best.

He said: "We have our names to protect, we have our pride and we have our nation to defend."

And they also have potential employers to impress, especially since Nigeria have never beaten England - their only meeting, at Wembley in 1994, was settled by David Platt's solitary goal.

Okocha, who was persuaded it was finally time to call it a day and make way for new faces after his moments of brilliance were not enough to prevent the Sweden defeat, will be looking for a new club after leaving Paris St Germain at the end of the season and playing England represents an important afternoon in the shop window.

His young team-mates must sense it too. Like Julius Aghahowa, the confident young 10.3secs, 100 metres man who sometimes gives the impression he can run that fast bearing down on goal with ball at feet.

He's fed up of the cold Ukrainian winters at Shakhtar Donetsk and wants away, but even though he scored against Sweden he hasn't yet really displayed his true explosive potential here.

Apart from his pedigree as the best celebratory somersaulter in the business, that is.

In truth, though, you only had to see the forlorn, drenched Polish souls who trekked off the pitch in Jeonju yesterday, battered both by a monsoon and Portugal's Pauleta, to get an inkling of how it must feel to get booted out of the World Cup and still have a game left to play.

Imagine it - the Nigerians have had to sit around for five days spouting vague stuff about salvaging pride when all they've really wanted was to fly home.

So Onigbinde will put on his most authoritative schoomaster's voice to tell them it will be "irresponsible" not to give of their best and utter one of his favourite lines about "the bigger they come, the harder they fall."

And if his talented young brigade believe the chief 's final exhortations, England may yet find they're not quite yet home and hosed.

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