LIKE CHELSEA FC. (UN)LIKE NIGERIA
LIKE CHELSEA
FC. (UN)LIKE NIGERIA
Chelsea football club entered into the 2015/2016
football season as champions after winning the league the previous year. The
season looked promising with in form and currently crowned PFA winner Eden
Hazard in sparkling form the previous year, also with the mercurial manager
Jose Mourinho still in the saddle.
New players Radamel Falcao,Asmir Begovic etc.
were recruited to bolster and reinforce the team after selling/loaning off some
players the club deemed surplus to requirements notably amongst them was the
goalkeeper Petr Cech who had kept a record of 220 clean sheets at the London
club in all competitions for about 11
seasons.
A sign of things or rather poor season to come
became evident when by the end of 2015, the team was lying in 14th position with
only 20 points in 19 matches averaging 1.05 points per game (at this time
Mourinho had been sacked and replaced with Gus Hiddink).It was unthinkable
how a team that won the premiership 7 months earlier found itself at the bottom
rung of the table.
However, the team was able to finish in 10th
position by amassing additional 30 points for a total of 50 points.
The Chelsea FC. management needed to restore the
club to glory, get back to winning ways and win back the fans’ support as
quickly as possible, thus Antonio Conte was brought in as the club’s next manager.
Conte was coming on the heels of near-success
achievement with the Azzurri at the Euros where they defeated tournament
favourites Spain in the second round and lost to Germany on penalties at the
quarter-finals-a game they should have won had Simone Zaza converted his
spot-kick after extra time.
The club entered into the 2016/2017 season
without any continental action which in some way would allow the new manager achieve
the club’s management target of at least a fourth place finish at the end of
the season.
As easy as it looked and sounded, achieving fourth place could also
be very difficult bearing in mind that most coveted and world class players, more
often than not, would want to play champions league football and would not sign
for Chelsea-Naingollan of Roma football club easily comes to mind. This meant that Conte
would make do with the players at his disposal with little or no new signings.
Players were released from their loan spells at
the club, some were sold while a handful were brought in i.e. Ngolo Kante to
strengthen the squad and at least qualify for champions league football the
following season. Things looked bright.
By the end of September 2016 however, the club
was 8th on the table. Deja vu? No thanks to defeats to Liverpool FC
and Arsenal FC which gave the coach a rude shock, an awakening call and a
rumour of an imminent sack was brewing at the bridge with fans calling for
Roman Abramovich (club owner) to wield the big stick on Signore Conte as he had
done to past managers in years 2004, 2007, 2008,2009,2011,2012 and 2015.Or
maybe thanks to those defeats. Non è stato licenziato ma ha dato un'altra
possibilità.
If there is anything the Italians are known for,
it is been highly tactical and meticulous. Remember Giovanni Trapattoni (il
Trap)? Marcelo Lippi? Nereo Rocco? Arrigo Sacchi? Fabio Capello? These were tactical
coaches who could switch formations at will and get results. Conte isn’t any different;
he went back to the drawing board: tweaked his formation, identified players
who would fit his new style of play (he had a best 11 made up of players from 7
different countries and none from Italy) kept his family in Italy to avoid
distractions and bingo, he won the league against all odds with a record 30
wins.
Nigeria entered the year 2015 with so much
promise, political activity and economic boom (maybe on paper).The country’s
national accounts had been rebased in 2014 thus making the country the 26th
largest economy in the world with an estimated GDP of $509B. This didn’t mean
anything to the common man on the street or the market women in Oyingbo market
because cost of living was high and the country’s national per capital poverty
was over 60%.
Cost of doing business was high with many
companies folding up or relocating their business to other African countries.
Insecurity was rife in the North while kidnappers held sway in the south. Things
were bad just like the case of Chelsea FC and there was need for a change, a
quick one at that and the 2015 general elections couldn’t have come earlier.
Nigeria general elections were billed to hold
February 14 2015 to elect or re-elect new leaders to run the affairs of the country
for the next four years but to the amazement of all (well almost all), the
elections were shifted by 6 weeks to March 28 by the electoral commission to
allow the commission distribute the voter’s cards, and allow the military crush
the Boko haram insurgents in the North. Really?
The tag on the then administration as being
clueless, corrupt and wasteful made the general populace troop out en masse to
vote out Goodluck Jonathan and instead elected a 73-year old retired
general-Muhammadu Buhari who had promised so many incentives, people-friendly
programmes and welfare packages for the citizenry during election campaign. There
was hope for the country at last. We believed him and gave him our votes. Antonio
Conte had promised a return to champion’s league football for the Stamford
bridge faithfuls. They believed him and supported him.
Few months into the administration of the
Buhari-led government, things had got worse, prices of foodstuff were out of
the reach of the common man, dollar rate to the naira had doubled, companies that
could not cope with high cost of running their business embarked on mass
sacking of their work force, kidnapping was the order of the day, while the
president ran a one-man show without constitutionally required ministers.
Things
became unbearable and so bad that some people in some quarters were calling for
a military intervention on the government as it was in years 1966,1975,1976,1979,1983
and 1993 which was akin to Chelsea fans’ request of sacking Antonio Conte.
After about six months into the administration
of Buhari, the president changed tactics. He appointed ministers ('his best 11') who immediately swung to work, the
CBN introduced fiscal policies to salvage the economy, the Nigerian Army was
battling the insurgents on another hand, investors were courted to come invest
in the the country, bail-out funds were granted to states that couldn’t meet
recurrent expenditure and so many other initiatives that the government took
just to revive the moribund economy. All to no avail. Alas the country went
into severe recession for the first time since 1984 due to a lump in the
country’s main export commodity and cash cow-oil. Interestingly, Muhammadu
Buhari was at the helm of affairs of the country at that time. Deja vu?
Today, the president is ill and receiving
treatment in a London hospital for an undisclosed ailment.
One can argue that Buhari inherited a bleeding
economy painted beautiful on the surface from the Jonathan administration,
falling oil prices, high rate of corruption (gravest in the history of the
country) backlog of workers’ salary unpaid, internal and external debt, etc. but
posterity would place Buhari in the nation’s history books as the man who led
Nigeria into recession-again.
Antonio Conte didn’t dwell on the 2015/2016
subpar performance of Chelsea, he carved a niche for himself, he identified the
problems and found answers within the team of players at his disposal. He
benched those that were not aligning with his philosophy and target to achieve
his aim and brought back players he felt could help his cause during the
campaign i.e. Nathan Ake who was initially loaned to Bournemouth.
Unlike Chelsea FC,the current administration
has 'powerful
ministers’ and untouchable members of
the president’s kitchen cabinet-whatever
that is-who do next to nothing in the government while there are millions of
Nigerians out there if given the chance could make a meaningful impact on the
economy and polity.
Chelsea got out of its crisis simply because
they had a determined manager backed by loyal team members-playing and
non-playing staff-who cooperated with him from start to finish. He bent rules
where he had to just so as to get results: he was hard where and when necessary
and never lost sight of his goal.
If we are waiting to be producers of pencil in
2018, then we have a very long way to go. If as youths all we want to do is to
take selfies with the politicians instead of telling them the hard truth and
making them sit up to do the needful or we go bashing and abusing one another
on social media, turning ourselves into e-warriors all in the name of
supporting politicians from one’s region, tribe or religious affiliations, then
we shouldn’t complain if they don’t do what they ought to do in terms of
delivering dividends of democracy and the joke will forever be on us.
Truth be told, have we not noticed that the
politicians are fixing their children in political positions in the country
while we are made to play second fiddle to them. The same families have been ruling since time
immemorial.
Are there no better, more qualified Nigerians to lead the country
irrespective of their social status and background?
If we must fix the country, we must go the
Chelsea way.
·
Get
the best brains (best 11)
·
Put
aside tribal, political, and religious sentiments
·
Don’t
dwell too much on the past, learn from it and move on
·
Enact
welfare policies and create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive
·
Create
jobs and improve infrastructure nationwide
·
Communicate
more with the people
·
Do
away with any form of Cabal
·
Above
all, have the fear of GOD
Abiodun
Soyombo
08166415188
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