Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Every December we will submit The Fan's Annual Report for Nigerian Football based on the team's performance in the calendar year. There are five units graded in this report and the grade from those units inform cumulative grade for Nigerian Football. The units are as follows: 1. Youth Football 2. Women Football 3. Local Professional Football 4. Football Administration 5. The Super Eagles YOUTH FOOTBALL The U23 team was the lone shining light in Nigeria's youth football for the 2016 year. The team had a rough preparation for the Olympic Games but played inspired football on its way to winning the only Olympic bronze medal for all of Nigeria's sporting contingent and saved the country from monumental embarrassment. Both U17 and U20 teams were disappointing. Each failed to reach the African Championship with the U17 team losing to Niger Republic and the U20 eliminated by Sudan. Those were, indeed, shock outcomes considering that Nigeria was the defending World C...

There are several Nigerian national team players, sometimes related, who share last names but few share first and last names. The latter case is rare and it often creates confusion in their historical record. Such confusion is then solved by using a middle name or attaching a I or II to identify each one. It is this latter case that is addressed in this piece. It is not unusual to expect the sharing of first and last names to occur with players named  Mohammed but amazingly there is no Nigerian international with first and last names where one of those names is Mohammed . Surprising, but factual. Instead, we found other names where this sharing occurs. A unique case is where the names Kalu and Uche are used by two players, one has Kalu as last name and the other has  Uche as a last name. Both players are still active. In another case, two players share same first and last names but confusion is avoided only because one of the players -- Mikel Obi -- changed his name fr...