{"id":26391,"date":"2020-05-16T23:50:41","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T22:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=26391"},"modified":"2020-05-16T23:50:41","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T22:50:41","slug":"let-keshi-rest-in-peace-okpala-reacts-to-bribery-allegations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=26391","title":{"rendered":"Let Keshi rest in peace, Okpala reacts to bribery allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nneka Ikem<\/strong>
\nThere have been many unverified allegations of coaches asking players to pay if they wished to be in the National or World Cup teams.
\nThere were also allegations of board members imposing players on the coaching crew. Coaches have also been accused of inviting players who were of no value to the national team just to appease an agent or just to showcase the player to international scouts.
\nThese are part of an unverified but syndicated game playing allegedly playing out at the national teams level and even at the U-17 cadre.
\nIn July 2018, video footage of the then Super Eagles Coach Salisu Yusuf, allegedly collecting a cash gift of $1000 from investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who posed as a representative of Tiger Eye Agency to influence the selection of two Nigerian players Osas Okoro and Rabiu Ali was published.
\nYusuf, according to the undercover, had collected the money as a bribe to get the players selected for the 2018 Africa Cup of Nations.
\nHe was tried and found guilty by the Nigeria Football Federation\u2019s Committee on Ethics and Fair Play after pictorial evidence was presented and banned for one year with a fine of $5,000.
\nFour years earlier, the Super Eagle technical crew of homegrown coaches had qualified Nigeria for the 2014 World Cup In Brazil. The formidable crew of Stephen Okechukwu Keshi popularly known as the \u2018Big Boss\u2019 led Daniel Amokachi also known as \u2018The Bull\u2019, Sylvanus Okpala aka \u2018Quick Silver\u2019 in his hay days and goalkeeper trainer Ike Shorunmu.
\nThe Big Boss is late but a former Super Eagles player will not let the Big Boss rest in peace. Four years after the most successful Nigerian coach passed on, Chinedu Ogbuke Obasi has called out the coach who won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013, accusing him and his crew of asking him for money before putting him in the 2014 Brazil World Cup-bound team.
\nSylvanus Okpala, retired Nigerian football midfielder, ex International and former Super Eagles assistant trainer has quickly rebuffed Obasi\u2019s damaging accusations on the dead and queried why it took him six years to speak out.
\n\u201cAfter the Africa Cup of Nations, I was asked to leave the national team so I wasn\u2019t at the World Cup but Obasi wasn\u2019t even part of our plan. Even when we went to the Nations Cup, he was not there and he never trained with us.
\n\u201cWhen we were there, we picked players based on merit. If you were not performing, we had no business with you and trust me, I don\u2019t bend anyhow. So all we did was the right thing and I think Keshi performed well. If Obasi was truthful and confident that somebody demanded money, he should have said it when Keshi was alive.
\n“What stopped him from saying this since 2014? Was he dreaming of coming back to the national team? You have to check your age then you can damn the consequences and come out to say the truth. I\u2019m not trying to defend anyone or say that it\u2019s not happening, but I didn\u2019t experience this in the squad that went to the Nations Cup and while I was there, there was no such thing.
\n\u201cEverything we did was based on merit. If you\u2019re good, you\u2019re good but if you weren\u2019t good, sorry, we picked players based on merit. We did not look at the faces.\u201d
\n\u201cObasi said he played in Europe and in the Champions League when he was dropped. What does that mean? That you\u2019re playing in the champions league doesn\u2019t mean that a player who is not playing in the Champions League cannot be better than you. Football performance is not measured that way.
\n“The only difference is that your team is playing the Champions League and you\u2019re fortunate to be in the team, but it doesn\u2019t make you better than a player whose team is not playing in the Champions League. That is not the yardstick for measuring a good player.
\n\u201cThese are some of the parameters we use that are wrong because football is not mathematics where two plus two gives you four.
\nObasi mentioned failure to bribe their way to the World Cup which was why players like Brown Ideye and Taiye Taiwo didn\u2019t make Keshi\u2019s team to the 2014 edition but Okpala pulled his hair as he explained what transpired in the team at the time.
\n\u201cBrown Ideye helped the team a lot. He was instrumental to the team winning the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 and made a lot of sacrifices. However, I wasn\u2019t there during the World Cup but playing very well in the Nations Cup doesn\u2019t mean that your form will be intact for the World Cup. You must continue to be in form to make the next competition.
\n\u201cIn 1980 when we won the Nations Cup. Nigeria overwhelmed the Algerians here but the following year during the World Cup qualifiers, they defeated us both home and away. It was the same Algerian team with almost the same Nigerian team.
\nSo, in football, you have to maintain your form and not rely on your previous performance because other players are trying to break into the team and the coach wants to take the best to the competition.
\n\u201cHowever, if you ask me, I know that not all the 23 players will play in the World Cup. If you\u2019re lucky without injury, you may play the World Cup with only 18 players. Based on his contributions during AFCON, maybe I would have asked Coach Keshi if we could add Ideye\u2019s name for his contributions in the past.
\n“He was one player then that if you said you didn\u2019t have a player on the left, Brown would go and perform creditably well. But that didn\u2019t mean he had to relax because he won the Nations Cup. You must be in form for a coach to pick you. So, I\u2019m still waiting for those who want to say rubbish about Keshi.
\nIkechukwu Uche<\/strong>
\nI was not surprised that Ikechukwu Uche did not make it to the World Cup because I knew what we went through with him during the 2013 AFCON. In our first game, we were playing 1-1 but were reduced to ten men and he was asked to come in. The coach told him what to do. When he got onto the pitch, he refused to do those things.
\n\u201cWe had to change another player to fortify our defence. When that player was going in, Stephen Keshi told him what to tell Uche but he still refused to play to instruction. We were one man down and Uche was not falling back to defend. It was mass attack and mass defence but he refused to do all that and he was not in form too.
\n\u201cHe was dropped from the team because he was disobedient. He kept on telling us that in his club, this was how they used to play and this is what our coach used to tell us. Then at a point in time, I called him and said IKE Uche, there is a way we want you to play here. This is the Nigerian National team and not your club, so this is how we want you to play. Don\u2019t come and tell us about your club.
\nHe said well it will help me but I told him that if he played for Villarreal and Liverpool bought him, will he go to Liverpool and start telling them that this is how they play in Villarreal? You don\u2019t tell the coach how to play you in Liverpool.
\nTaiye Taiwo<\/strong>
\n“I also read about Taiye Taiwo\u2019s outburst in the papers. After our experience with him, we never invited him again.
\n“During our AFCON qualifier against Rwanda, Taiye didn\u2019t play well in that game. Keshi complained after the game but the players went back to their rooms and started plotting how to remove Keshi. They never knew that Keshi\u2019s room was the next to Taiye\u2019s room.
\n\u201cTaiye was telling other players that Keshi was shouting at him and that he will do to Keshi what he did to other coaches and that they would ensure that Keshi was sacked.
\n\u201cKeshi was in his room listening to all their conversations. Now, most of them are now coming to talk about money. It wasn\u2019t about money because I knew about these two issues involving Taiye and Uche.
\n\u201cWhich coach will like to invite a player who wants him sacked in his team? It\u2019s not possible. I am telling you what happened as an insider.
\n\u201cOne of the problems we had then in the National team was that some NFF officials had too much contact with the players. They called them on the phone, became too familiar with the players, gossiped about this and that. You don\u2019t do that with players.
\n\u201cI had an experience during one of the days in camp. I was in charge of training the players. Sometime in 2012 before our qualifying match against Rwanda. I took a decision to do a little ball work instead of strenuous training since we would be playing a match and it would help them get used to the game early.
\n\u201cSo, I introduced the ball work but some of the so-called big players went and complained to Keshi that he should see what I had introduced and that they didn\u2019t want that. Keshi now called me and said that I should change and that the players didn\u2019t want that, and that I should use the other warm-up plan.
\n“Do you know what is happening today? Almost all the teams in Europe and around the world have adopted what I did so many years ago. I never saw anyone doing it back then but that is what is in vogue now. They use ball work to warm up now. The players rejected it many years ago. Is it because I\u2019m not a white man? Is it only the Europeans who can develop tactics? Today, some of those players are coaches and they\u2019re doing what Okpala initiated some years ago.
\n\u201cWe must have to find players who want to play for the national team.\u201d
\nWhy coaches run from home-based players<\/strong>
\nThe issue of including home-based players in the national teams is a sad story. We have many good players. What is making the coaches to run away from the home-based players is the work. You need to train and coach them and you also need to teach them. This takes a lot of energy.
\n\u201cI know what we suffered to painstakingly get those home-based players that we took to the Nations Cup and the 2014 World Cup. It was because we wanted to prove a point. It\u2019s not because the players are not good. You can polish them to a standard but it takes a lot of hard work.
\nRemember it was even the home-based players who helped us to qualify for the 2013 Cup of Nations. During the qualifiers, we used about five players from the domestic league to execute the matches because most of them coming from Europe were not fit. We went to the Nations Cup with about three or four of home-based who also played and won the cup!
\nWhich one is now better? A coach who took home-based players and about three or four of them played and won a Nations Cup or a coach who never took home-based players and never won the Nations Cup?
\nEven in that Nations Cup, there\u2019s no team that you\u2019d say that overwhelmed the Super Eagles.
\n\u201cWe played the Zambians, we played Burkina Faso twice..in the group stage and in the final. We played Mali and the Ivorians that everybody was afraid of playing. When we mention Cote D\u2019Ivoire, it\u2019s not the Ivorians of the last two or four years. I\u2019m talking about the Ivorians of then\u2026 Yaya Toure and Didier Drogba.
\nThese were top players and our team dealt with them. We used the home-based to win convincingly. They were taken to the World Cup and about four of them played while the rest were in the reserve team. They went to the 2014 World Cup and qualified for the second round of the Mundial only to be defeated by France 2-1 and you all knew what happened.
\n\u201cThe game was very tight but France later won 2-1. How can you compare this performance with a coach who said home-based players have nothing to offer? He went to the World Cup with all the professionals he\u2019s talking about in Europe and he couldn\u2019t get to the second round. These are the questions we need to ask.\u201d
\nDuring Okpala\u2019s stint with the Super Eagles, he recalled how the late Stephen Keshi invited the players in the domestic league to the national camp and released them for their club matches at weekends.
\n\u201cWhen Keshi was the Super Eagles Coach, he gave me the responsibility of inviting home based players to the national camp. He gave me the assignment and I remember encouraging him to keep the players because we could make something out of them.
\nI remember telling him that by the time we start coaching these domestic players, he could tell them to go after two weeks, but if we are patient and keep them beyond two weeks, he would see the best of them.
\n\u201cIt did happen that after the first one week, Keshi said no\u2026 no\u2026 these people have to go. I reminded him of my earlier warning. I told him to be patient and we were able to get about six home-based players who won the Nations Cup and although some were dropped in the team to the World Cup when I wasn\u2019t there.
\n\u201cNow, there are more talented players than before because I watch the league but the stress of bringing them to be at par in performance with those coming from Europe takes a lot of time and energy and that is what coaches are running away from.
\n\u201cStephen Keshi went to the Nations Cup and won it. He went to the World Cup and qualified for the second round. He was not offered a contract rather they criticized him every day in the media for nothing. Then, we had an assembly of good coaches. We had Stephen Keshi, Amokachi, Ike Shorunmu and myself and we knew where the direction we were going.
\n\u201cSuddenly, they came and disintegrated and destroyed the team. They removed me and caused a lot of trouble in the team because we won the Nations Cup or for whatever reason. I don\u2019t know. We had a very formidable coaching crew. We set a goal and said this is where we were going.
\n\u201cWesterhof is being regarded as the best coach that ever tinkered the Nigerian team but it took Westerhof 5 years and 6 months \u2026 let\u2019s say six years to achieve the same thing that Stephen Keshi and his crew achieved in one year and six months! So who is better? Is it because we are Nigerians?
\n\u201cI needed to reply them because I was an insider and nobody can say I\u2019ve taken money from him to do this or that, Okpala said.
\nHe probably forgot that Westerhof took almost all home-based players to the 1990 Nations Cup and won silver. That was just about one year after he resumed. Only Ademola Adeahina and Andrew Uwe were the foreign-based players in the team.<\/em><\/strong>
\nFrom then till he left Westerhof used home players in matches. But this does not take anything away from the valid and brilliant points Okpala made.<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u25aa By Vanguard<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nneka Ikem There have been many unverified allegations of coaches asking players to pay if they wished to be in the National or World Cup teams. There were also allegations of board members imposing players on the coaching crew. Coaches have also been accused of inviting players who were of no value to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5778],"tags":[1620,682,1621],"class_list":["post-26391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-keshi","tag-obasi","tag-okpala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}