Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

The 2014 World Cup in Brazil leaves us with many questions surrounding representativeness across the globe. Traditionally, the number of berths awarded to each confederation has been determined via political maneuvering even though the larger public naively believes that the number of berths are determined by performance. Sure, performance is usually drummed up as a rationale to justify increase in berths for a confederation but there is no known FIFA formula for determining this increase. Thus, political compromises have often been used to make the determination. That compromise has been reached by merely increasing the number of teams in the finals or in a recent move, denying the defending champion an automatic place in the final. The difficulty in reaching an agreement on who deserves additional berth and who does not is based on the fact that there is no established formula for making the decision. Importantly, UEFA initially held fast to its domination of number of berths in th...

Recently, a Plateau state court declared the illegality of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF). However, it is not the first Nigerian court to make such declaration and it might not be the last if changes are not made to the NFF’s existence as an institution. What we do in this piece is to briefly explain what has led to this situation and what are the alternatives for escaping this situation. Please understand that there are several pieces to this issue, some complex and others less complex but the intent here is to be brief and clear without being clouded by minor issues that may distract from a clear understanding of the situation. The Genesis By January 2004, FIFA required Nigerian football to comply with FIFA’s statutes requiring affiliate associations to be independent from government interference in local football. Before then, Nigerian football was governed by the infamous Decree 101 which stamped government’s total control over football administration including speci...

It is important to take a look at the records of African teams against other confederations particularly since African teams have historical struggles making it out of the opening round of the World Cup. But first acknowledge that, for first time, multiple African teams have moved past the opening round of the World Cup and, thus, there may well be a light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Though the World Cup began in 1934, we have used data from 1970 because that is the first time Africa received an automatic berth to the World Cup final. One quirk to the data is that African teams had rarely played against a team from CONCACAF until 2006 and, in addition, sometimes there is just a single game against a Confederation. Those quirks are important because they can skew the data. Thus, read with caution. Pay attention to the efficiency scores (Eff.) in the extreme right column. Understand that an efficiency score between .30 and .50 is not necessarily bad. Why? efficiency scores...