By Steve Alabi
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It is the quite amazing that our football governors are unbelievably sold on the wrong notion that our football redemption in the twenty-first century still lies in the hands of expatriates. The eggheads in the Nigeria Football Federation have gone to the ridiculous extent of entrusting the Super Falcons, a team taken to dizzying heights by Nigerian coaches, to a foreigner. Pray, what laurels do they want to win that a Nigerian coach has not won?

The 2018 Awcon just concluded over the weekend in Ghana is a clear testimony that our game, at least the women wing, no longer needs expatriate tinkering. The Swedish coach that the NFF hired to improve the Falcons, Thomas Dennerby denigrated the national passion unpardonably in Ghana. Tears welled up in my eyes when the Banyana Banyana inflicted a near fatal defeat on the Falcons in their opener. Up till this disastrous defeat, the Falcons had never lost an opening game in the African championships.

Was there really a Nigerian bench in Ghana? Did you see any sensible response from the Falcons’ coaches in the entire championship, particularly in the semifinal versus Cameroon and the final against Banyana Banyana? Did you see any improvement, whether technical or tactical, in the Falcons’ game? I did not.

Instead, I saw a team easily overwhelmed by average play from feeble oppositions. The Falcons, made super by Nigerian coaches, huffed and puffed against Cameroon for 120 minutes before prevailing through penalty shootout, the second time the team would suffer such humiliating experience in Africa.

Matters became worse in the final. Nigerians were looking forward to a sweet revenge on Banyana Banyana in the game. Defeat was out of the question. I am sure no Nigerian actually contemplated extra time, let alone a penalty shootout, not likely the extreme pessimist. But what did we see? For the first time, the Falcons had to depend on the lottery luck of penalty shootout to win a trophy they had captured ten times out of twelve, all in regulation time. The NFF’s Swedish expert could only manage a victory that puritans and patriots found difficult to celebrate.

For me, the emotion proper to that penalty victory was not satisfaction or relief. It was anger. Anger at the thoughtless reversal of the gains of over two decades by the NFF. Instead of building on the gains of indigenous coaches taking charge, they brought an expatriate. Yet, not only did the team not improve under him, he could not produce a new player. No new player was born to us in Ghana. We still relied on the players indigenous coaches had used to better effects in the past.

Take Asisat Oshoala for example. One did not need much technical wisdom to see that she was not in the competition, particularly in the final. She was tentative all through and cut a frustrating and forlorn figure. Amazingly, the Swedish coach kept her in the team even when she fired an easy penalty miserably wide in the final.

The aim of the NFF in hiring an expatriate was ostensibly to improve the Super Falcons in world championships. They gave three  reasons for hiring him: To sustain and enhance the Super Falcons’ dominance on the African scene; to take the Falcons and other women’s teams to the next level of challenging for laurels at global competitions like the Olympics and the World Cup and to generally lay the foundation for the real development of women’s football in the country.

It was taken for granted that the improvement should first manifest in better delivery on the continent. Where the Falcons were winning with much effort before, we ought to see definite accentuation in technical and tactical superiority they bring to their game against African oppositions, not that the same oppositions they used to beat with relative ease would now stretch them scaringly to ridiculous limits.

I cannot remember Nigerians needing to resort to prayers for the Falcons to win games in Africa when indigenous coaches were in charge. Except when Equatorial Guinea used underarm tactics to deny the Falcons in 2008 and 2012, our girls have always stridden through the Awcon in imperious manner. But under Thomas Dennerby, prayer became a tactical weapon for the first time. Nigerians started praying fervently right from the opening match when South Africa ran rings around a lethargic Falcons lacking in depth and sense. If prayer would be our main weapon of overcoming strong oppositions, we definitely did not need to go beyond our shores to get prayer warriors.

Dennerby has failed in the first of the three targets set for him. He has not enhanced the Super Falcons’ dominance on the African scene. I doubt if he can take the Falcons and our other female teams to the next level of challenging for laurels at global competitions like the Olympics and the World Cup, let alone lay the foundation for the real development of women’s football. The earlier the NFF sack him, the better for the Nigerian game.