Brentford Massacre: Blame the Jersey, Tea & Coffee

More facts are beginning to emerge on what led to Super Eagles’ dismal performance in the friendly match with Ghana last Tuesday in London. One of the players on the bench who did not eventually play has decried the management of the team and partly attributed the 4-1 defeat to incompetence on the part of managers of the team.

But the team’s coordinator, Emma Atta defended the Nigeria Football Association last night even after admitting a huge flaw on their part. He said the problem was a carry-over from the secretariat which could not be blamed on those running the office now.

The Nigerian side were not equipped for the match. It is a common practice to go for matches, especially during winter, with two sets of jerseys for the players to change after the first half. This is because the ones won at first half would have been wet and are usually changed with fresh and dry ones in the second half. This is to check cold. But the NFA were in London with one set of jersey and could not, therefore, change the wet ones that they used in the first half.

On resumption, players were compelled to use the same jerseys and the cold really bit into their marrows. They conceded all the goals in the second half when the players got to the pitch shivering. The players who are all based in Europe and know how modern football is run were scandalized by the preparation of the FA. The Ghanaian team had fresh jerseys on resumption of the second half and they, consequently, appeared better in the cold.

At half time, the Ghanaians served their players with tea, coffee or water with room temperature. The Nigerian team had cold water, no tea and no coffee and they were playing in London in February.

“We wondered where they (team managers and the FA) thought they were, we wondered where they were coming from and we thought that Nigeria was in real trouble if, at this stage, our people could be this backward,” the player, a top Nigerian star, said on phone and complained to a few people in the football family too.

Emma Atta, a board member of the association and the team’s coordinator explained yesterday that the secretariat, before now, could not account for jerseys in the FA stores and that it dawned on them that only two sets of jerseys were readily available before the match. One set was taken to London for the friendly and the other reserved for the Olympic team that beat Equatorial Guinea 5-0 on Wednesday.

“If we took the two sets of jerseys to London, the Under 23 team would not have had anything to use. It is a problem the secretariate met and which they would sort out soon.”

“I am not saying that we lost to Ghana because of this but it partly contributed because cold had really caught the players on resumption of the second half,” the player said, adding “our people should not be behaving like bush men in this modern times. It does not pay us to prepare for matches this way. We ought to have known better. Our organisation is still poor.”