NIGERIA PLAYERS ARE MOVING ON NEWSPAPER PAGES

Gone are those good, old days when Nigeria players were hot cakes on the European transfer market.
In those days, Austin ‘jay Jay’ Okocha switched from Turkey to PSG for a record fee of $17 million, Sunday Oliseh turned up at Juventus, Finidi George Delivered a fortune to Ajax when he transferred to Real Betis in Spain and Victor Ikpeba pitched tent with Borussa Dortmund after an eventful time at Monaco.

You really have to go back a few years to recall major transfers in Europe concerning Nigerian players.
Why are Nigerian players no longer much sought after in Europe?
It must be admitted that the market is a lot more competitive these days with a lot more options from lesser European countries and Brazil. It is therefore a titanic battle for Nigerian players to carrying European Union Passport to find their way at a time attempts are being made to restrict the influx of foreign player to these leagues.

Lack of success at full international level has equally dealt a serious blow on the ambitions of Nigeria players in Europe. Against most expectations, the Super Eagles failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

And so while so of the Eagle stars were probably on some exotic Caribbean island beaches on holidays, some were watching the World Cup on television back home, leaving the Ivorian and Ghanaian counterparts to strut their stuff on the biggest shop window in world football.

This therefore clearly underscore the importance of Nigeria qualifying for next year’s wWorld Cup in South Africa.

Some respite came the way of the Nigeria player in 2007 when the country’s Under 17 team won the FIFA World Cup for the third time. That afforded some of the country’s youngsters like Macauley Chrisantus, Rabiu Ibrahim and lukman Haruna to also move to Europe.

Chrisantus has now had to go down t tier lower in Germany so as to enjoy first team football, which he did not get at Hamburg. Haruna had made the most progress after he played a handful of games for Monaco last season, Rabiu Ibrahim is knocking on the door of the main team at Sporting Lisbon.

These youngsters could well figure in major moves across Europe in some time to come. This would probably have been as early as this year had the FIFA World Youth Champion in Egypt been played during the transfer market window period and not in September, when the transfer window has long been shut.

The National team Coach, Shuabu Amodu, took a lot of stick when he described his team as a bunch of average players . But, if the truth be told, that is what most of these players really are. Take away the hype associated with sport these days and what you are left with are just some useful players, who earn far more than their better gifted predecessors could only dream of.

The domestic league ought to be a steady conveyor belt of young talent to the international market. But the standards are disgraceful even in Nigeria Premier League that more often than not, you come away from watching a league game wondering what has really become of the National Sport.
Football academies have mushroomed across the country, but the are yet to be regulated and so are often the contraption of some businessman whose only driving force is not to develop football at the grassroots, but to see how many raw youngsters he can ship out of the country for some quick hard currency.

Players from the Nigeria Premier league are very rough diamonds, so much so that they have to be taught basic tactics when they some how find their way into any of the national teams.

A coach with one of the national teams complained to me recently:”I wonder what most of these players are taught at their clubs. When we get them, they are very raw, they don’t know what to do when they are not with the ball, which is most of the game. We are force to teach them from the scratch”.

It is therefore not far fetched why some of these players do not get contracts when the move out of trials abroad.
That may well explain why the Norwegian league has in the last few years proved to be very successful “football finishing and re-education school” for some of Nigeria’s finest young stars –Mikel, Ogbuke-Obasi and, only recently, Odion Ighalo.

Ighalo spent less than 10 months at Lyn Oslo before he was snapped up by Udinese for more than 10 times what it cost the Norwegians to get him from Nigeria.

It is therefore imperative that we have to address head-long the problems at home, from the poor standards of the Local League to a proper monitoring of the rash of so-called football academies springing up almost everyday.

Before then, the newspaper men armed with their fertile imagination and good sense of humour, will continue to amuse us with some will speculations about Obafemi Martins moving to Arsenal or Seyi Olofinjana swapping Stoke City for Monaco.

Now the joke is on us all of us.