Nigerian Soccer is No More – At Least For a While.

I wanted to write a quick blogpost about a team I grew up loving to watch – The Nigerians. This was solely due to the fact that when I was a youngster playing soccer obviously one of the most important and coolest things was to have awesome soccer jerseys.

Needless to say the Nigerians every world cup had the best hands down. Now however, I gotta give it to my Dutch and they’re orange get-ups.

But after this past World Cup where the Nigerians managed to wrangle up only a measley point, Nigerians President decided the embarrassment was enough to suspend the national team for 2 years. 2 years! Shortly after, he realized this was quite the overreaction he slimed it down to 1 year. Well played sir.

A picture is said to say a thousand words. Well here’s one from their last World Cup. That should say it all.

I really do think people underestimate the value of team chemistry. Imagine you go out to play a pick up game. You’re on a team with people you have never played with and your opponent is a club soccer team that has played together for years.

How do you think you’d do? Poorly to say the least unless those few guys happened to be from Brazil’s National Team.

The reason is that you can’t expect players to just understand how you play. Everybody plays different. For me, I was a speedy little youngster. My sprinting speed what was equivalent to an NFL wide-receiver. And for anybody who knows anything about timed 40 yard dash times I was a 4.33 which is flying.

Anyways back on track here. So you can’t always just understand how players play the game. Some are more offensive minded like myself and tend to push the ball forward. Some are more defensive. Some are more possession oriented.

Well familiarity breeds consistency. By players playing with each other they begin to learn this. So to be honest I don’t know what the President of Nigeria is thinking because he’s giving every other country that’s in the next World Cup and year head start. Not very smart in my opinion.

So a toast to the Nigerians as they try to play chemistry catch up and if things go as planned, I’m sure the President will suspend them for the entire following World Cup as well. Sorry guys but I hope you pull out a miracle. I’ll be rooting for you as always.

Cheers

-Matt Smith

Tags: nigerians, world cup