Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Recently, an explosive debate has gone on about whether players in Nigeria's local league are good enough to make the national team squad. The debate has generated so many opinion that the Federation has publicly indicated that it plans to include in the national team coach's contract a requirement to intensely scout the local league. The fact remains, however, that many Nigerians have developed several unpleasant myths about the local league. Here are some of the often repeated myths about players in the the elite league in Nigeria. We examine each of them below. 1. These are poorly skilled players unworthy of playing for the Super Eagles. This myth has existed since the mid-1990s when the Super Eagles dominated Africa with a team that was made almost entirely by foreign-based players. In fact, at the time, the team starters were all based outside the country. Although the national team continues to constitute players drawn from outside the country, two squads built duri...

When Nigeria lines up for two AFCON qualifiers against Sierra Leone late this month it will mark an unspoken test for Nigeria. Nigeria's team, since a disappointing World Cup two years ago, has been rebuilt into a team that most Nigerians feel may be the best in quite some time. The squad has interchangeable players and no one player can be designated a star that the team depends on to thrive. But yet it is also a vastly different squad from any in the country's history. In 70 years of international football, Nigeria has never featured a squad that is so dependent on players with dual citizenship, many born outside Africa. That very characteristic is claimed to be the biggest asset of this team. The fans believe that players bred in Nigeria lack appropriate football education required to compete with the best in the world. But the rough and tumble of African soccer may well challenge that claim and that is where the Sierra Leonians step up. African soccer is not, at times...

On July 18 of 2013, I ran some numbers to check on the integrity of the elite league in Nigeria ( Click here ) and they revealed serious questions regarding integrity of the league. The 2013 data compare the league in Nigeria to those in Ghana, South Africa, and England on percentages of home and away wins. Nigeria's percentages were aberrant compared to the three other leagues. Nigerian home teams won 77% of their matches, an incredibly huge percentage. Moreover, home teams were awarded 100% of the penalty kicks most of which came in the second half. Then 2013 was compared to the Nigerian league of 1979. The difference was stark. The 1979 version was statistically similar to other non-Nigerian leagues. In essence, it demonstrates how decadent the Nigerian league has become since the credible years, several decades ago!  Seven years after that 2013 blog, I now use the Sofascore website to check on the same issues. The data are accessed March 1, 2020. This time, I compare the ...