No longer walking alone
By Steve Alabi
Thirty years of waiting for a league title came to a dramatic end for former English giants, Liverpool last week. The title was delivered, not at Anfield packed full of joyous and boisterous fans nor after 90 minutes of furious football by the club, but at an empty Stamford Bridge, the home of one of the new but declining giants of the English game, Chelsea. The champions in waiting were in fact television spectators of their own crowning. They had done enough to merit being crowned in enemy territory at the expense of last season’s title holders, Manchester City. They will have the added joy of being given a guard of honour tomorrow at Etihad, the home of the dethroned champions.
The Anfield faithful would probably have wanted a different way to end the 30-year old jinx but the gods of soccer have a way of constructing fabulous football stories that Hollywood script writers would give one arm to concoct. So it was with Brazil’s agonizing wait for a first World Cup title which the Brazilians expected would happen at their national temple, the Maracana, when they hosted the championship in 1950 but which the gods delivered eight years after in Sweden in a wondrous run anchored by the tiny feet of a precocious 17-year old Pele. Uruguay had caused unbearable national calamity for the Brazilians in 1950 when they unexpectedly came from behind to win the Jules Rimet trophy and deny Brazil a first title.
In similar manner, the noisy half of Manchester, masterminded by the utterly insatiable Pep Guardiola, denied Liverpool last season when it all seemed the jinx was finally broken with a last gasp chest on the line in the final matches of the season. City’s incredible staying power and insatiable hunger ensured that 97 points, the highest haul by any runners-up in the history of the league, were not enough to get Liverpool the Premiership crown. More frustrating was the fact that the Reds lost only one game in the league. Yet, they were pipped to the title. The pain was unbearably excruciating. Not even the Champions League and FIFA Clubs World Cup crowns they won in the same season could assuage the feeling of emptiness the league loss occasioned.
But last season of European and World Club triumphs and the near success in the league ultimately created an incredible self belief in the Reds that propelled them to the title this season. The lessons had been well learnt. In the hands of a German tactician, Liverpool were no longer walking with unsteady gait. Jurgen Klopp had infused German steel into an ensemble of talents built around the deadliness of two African goal poachers, Mohammed Sala from Egypt and Sadio Mane from Ivory Coast.
In only five years of being in charge, Klopp has not only turned the fortunes of Liverpool around but also inspired them to become the most successful European club of the past three seasons. Klopp started his fruitful handling of the Reds with runners-up finishing in the UEFA Europa League and the Football League Cup in the 2015/16 season. In the 2017/18 and the following season, he took Liverpool to successive finals of the Champions League, winning a sixth title for the club at second attempt and a first World Clubs Cup at first attempt. He has crowned it all with the club’s most coveted dream, another league title after 30 years.
The great lesson from Liverpool and Klopp’s league triumph is that dreams do come true for those who work hard at it. I am of the firm belief that there is no sporting dream beyond us in Ondo and Ekiti States. Our illustrious forebears showed us that even in the colonial times. I believe even more that there is no football title beyond our grasp if we set our mind to it. But wishes are not horses. We have to go beyond merely dreaming and work as if our lives depended on it for our dreams to be realized.
We established Sunshine Stars of Akure in 1995. Up till now, the club has no national title to its name. We established Ekiti United of Ado-Ekiti in 2013. Up till now, the club has not been able to go on promotion even once. Both clubs were created, not to make up numbers, but to be frontrunners on the national scene. While Sunshine Stars are reasonably well established for the challenges of top flight competitions, Ekiti United is unfortunately not even yet equipped for credible amateur performance.
Those who win football titles drive their dreams with every fibre of their being. They draw up workable plans lasting for specific periods to go after their dreams. A great example is Nigeria’s victory in the 1993 U-17 World Cup. When I was appointed a Board Member of the NFA in 1991, Fanny Amun sent me a congratulatory message in which he enclosed a plan of how he could win Japan ’93 for Nigeria if given the chance of coaching the team. He was so empowered; the rest is history.
Were the handlers of Sunshine Stars to emplace a truly workable plan, not just the routine annual participation in national competitions, it is quite possible to get the club to win the league and the FA Cup within three seasons. Were the handlers of Ekiti United to emplace a truly workable plan, not just the routine annual participation in the NNL, it is quite possible to get the club to win promotion to the elite league in two seasons. But these are aspirations that do not come by happenstance or routine performance. They come by deliberate emplacement of well thought out plans and a single minded pursuit of targets.
Any handler whose interest is different from this or whose desires are selfish will find it difficult, if not impossible, to create title winning victories. Klopp came to Liverpool to break the league jinx. He set the whole of his being to it. He did not waver even when the gods favoured him with continental honours. He remained entirely focused on the target. And he got it.
Those handling our clubs can do the same. It is not rocket science. Let them take up the gauntlet. Or we will dare them to give us the clubs to run – to show them that it can be done.