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60 Minutes With Ace Footballer, SEGUN ODEGBAMI
Segun Odegbami is an ace Footballer who not played the game in his younger days but captained the Green Eagles. He also led the Eagles to the Nations Cup Victory in 1980 when Nigeria hosted the tournament.
He used to be called Mathematical Odegbami because of the mathematical way he used to play.
He recently returned from a trip to Cote d voire where he went to watch the just concluded Nations Cup.
A few days back, City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE got him to analyse Nigeria’s performance at the tournaments, especially at the final match. And why Nigeria couldn’t win the match.
Below are excerpts.
What is your assessment of the performance of Nigerian players at the last Nations Cup?
Well, we had a collection of very good athletes, physically strong, tall, fast, they have all of those things. But we did not have a number of truly exceptional players in cartain positions. So it was down to the coach to be able to make do with the squad that he had. Unfortunately, there were a few key players that were injured, before the competion started, so they were not in the team. And they were very critical for the success of the team. But going there, somehow, he adopted a style of play which was new, relatively to Africa. We learnt and played it in 1979 when we went to Brazil. That was the style of play at the time. That was Mourinhos’s style of play too. It is everybody falling back into your half, as a unit into a defensive strategy, outnumbering the opposition, making it difficult for them to score and then if you have very fast forwards, you will go on the counter and you will score. It was a very simple strategy. Because of the quality of the pitches in Ivory Coast they were able to execute the strategy. So it worked. And it worked up till the final match where the strategy evaporated.
And the relative inexperience of the Nigerian coach, came forcefully into play, because he didn’t have a Plan B. He didn’t have another strategy. It was still the same strategy throughout, against a team that was energised, a team that was lifted beyond their natural capacity by the occasion, by the overwhelming support of their country, by the circumstances that brought them to the final which was not normal. They played like people who were possessed. And in fact, at the end, nobody could have stopped them from winning. That was the kind of spirit that they had.
So the Nigerian team was okay. Their system worked up till the final match. They were a little bit lucky. They were not the best team in the championship for sure. They could have won the cup if the coach had been a little bit more experienced and had a Plan B and had been able to use psychology to get the players not be overwhelmed with the occasion.
Was that why we didn’t see a lot of attacks from our boys in our opponents frontline and their finishing appeared poor?
Yeah. That is it now. It is about the atmosphere. The atmosphere has a lot to do with it. When you go into a field, where you had between 80,000 to 90,000 people, even though the capacity was sixty something thousand. Just as we had in 1980 in Lagos when we had almost a 100,000 people filled the stadium that had capacity for 60,000 people. The support was so overwhelming. There was 100% support for Nigeria in 1980. And the Algerians who were the best team, throughout the championship until they got to the finals, could not, or succumbed to the pressure of the day. Whereas we flew, we rode on the back of the support, and played better than we had played from the start. That is the same thing that happened this year. The Ivorians who had no dance, who came from the dead and got to the finals, under extra ordinary circumstances, got their and the support was overwhelming. There was nothing anybody could have done at that stage to have stopped them, except with a little bit of luck, some experience, psychology, against a very experienced team, which our team wasn’t. In the end, the better team won. They were better than us that night and the Nigerian teamplayed defensively, they did not have a Plan B, they were dispiritedly. They wouldn’t even see their own supporters on the field, because the colour of Orange was overwhelming. Every sound that emenated was cheering the opposition, so it was very difficult, very, very difficult.
As an ace footballer I would like you to tell us what it takes for a team to win an important match like that? Are there some basic princples?
(He breaks into laughter) well, every match has to be won by one team. And every team has to devise their own strategy. And you can imagine how many teams exist in the world, and every one striving to win, so there are as many strategies to win a match as there are teams playing it. So there is no formula. There is no one formula. There are as many formulars as there are teams and coaches. But fundamentally, let me put it this way, you have to have a good team, you have to have good players, you have to have some formations, some kind of plan in your head, as to how you are going to play, but you’ll find out that once the Referees whistle goes all those plans will evaporate and you start to play in accordance to circumstances. Sometimes you think you will do something one way, but as in chess, you don’t know what the opposition will do, so you have to start to be thinking 2 steps ahead and they are thinking to counter you 2 steps ahead. So, there is no plan really. But something that comes close to it is, unify the team, let them play in Harmony, let them play with a basic understanding, let the team flow, have a playing style, you hold the ball, you pass it around, you go forward and backwards, and sideways or you just go forward continuously. All those little niceties, they all come in to play, but I tell you, its all Make-believe, deep down, just have your good players. If they are very good they will win.
Is it also possible to have a complete team with a good goal keeper, a good defence, a good midfield, a good attack team, an assemblage of all of them, all complete in one team?
Yes. It happens, but it doesn’t mean you will win. It happens. That is the whole intention. All the big clubs in the world, that is what they try to do. They try to assemble the best players in the world, around them, particularly how a coach sees them. Paris St. Germain at a point, 3 years to 4 years ago assembled some of the best players in the world, Neyma from Brazil, Messi from Argentina, Mbappe, those are the best forwards in the world. The coach assembled those guys with other players who are the best centre half in the world, but they never won the European Cup. They never won it. But that was their ambition.
You have some of the teams like Real Madrid, like Barcelona, year in, year out, they try to shop for the best identified players from anywhere in the world to put in their team. Everybody is looking for exceptionally gifted players but they come with a price tag. And it is not everybody that can afford those prices.
So, the further back you go, in the strength of the teams, the less the price of the players. But it is a continuous thing. Everywhere you go, everybody is looking for the best players in that environment.
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