Onigbinde’s damming verdict: Nigerian football not growing

FIFA and CAF Technical Instructor, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde, has assessed Nigerian football and come up with a damming verdict which would not be palatable for the officials in the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF.

According to Onigbinde, who coached Nigeria’s senior national team at the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea/Japan, though the country’s football might have recorded some successes in the outgoing year by winning a record fifth FIFA U-17 World Cup in Chile and the U-23 Africa Cup of Nations in Senegal, it is hard to see the added values of these victories to the game in terms of development and growth in the succeeding years.

Onigbinde, who coached Shooting Stars Sports Club (3SC) of Ibadan in 1984, and took Oluyole Warriors to the final of the Africa Club Champions Cup, noted with lamentation that it is rare to see most of the Golden Eaglets players graduating comfortably to the senior team in the past years, adding that the same fate that befell their predecessors would equally happen to the Golden Eaglets stars of the Chile 2015.

“If this continues to happen, how can we say we are growing as a nation?” Onigbinde asked rhetorically. “There is no development at all. We should not call the success of Nigeria at the U-17 World Cup a development. After winning the World Cup, where are the players?
These present Eaglets players, where will they be in the next two years to say the least?

“I have been saying it time without number that until we have functional developmental programme, then we can begin to count gains of our successes at the world stage. There is no plan for these young and talented boys in the age grade teams for them to move up the ladder to the senior level. They will win World Cup for us and we will abandon them to their fate.

“There is a lot to be done at the grassroots where the future lies. So I don’t think there is any development in Nigerian football now. I pray that we will get it right soon,” said Onigbinde, who remains a highly respected Nigerian soccer tactician.