Monday, 19th April 2021, will go down as one of the craziest days in modern football history after fans woke up to the news that 12 major clubs have decided to create a new competition called the European Super League.
Please make no mistake, the rumour has been ongoing for a while, and it even forced FIFA to release a statement that any player that participates in the competition would be banned from playing at the World Cup.
But yesterday, the reports gained more intensity with news emerging that official confirmation from all the 12 clubs was imminent.
And late last night, fans fears were confirmed as the big six clubs in the English Premier League, three clubs from the Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A, respectively, confirmed the creation of the European Super League.
The clubs involved are Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid.
It’s important to state that greed is the only reason behind this as these clubs feel they deserve more money, and they are being cheated by UEFA, but this is not a discussion for today.
However, the creation of the ESL will definitely have a massive impact on the players, including the Super Eagles stars.
Shortly after the 12 clubs confirmed their decision, UEFA and the federations of these clubs released a statement, saying the clubs would be banned from their domestic leagues. At the same time, their players will be denied from participating in international competitions.
FIFA also released a statement echoing what UEFA had said. With almost all the Super Eagles squad players plying their trade abroad, what does FIFA’S statement mean for the Nigerian team?
Right now, the Super Eagles are not in danger of losing their players for the 2022 World Cup, as none of their players currently play for the clubs mentioned above.
However, that could all change when the transfer window opens in the summer. Also, there are rumours that Porto have been invited to join the ESR, which means Zaidu Sanusi could miss Nigeria’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
But while it’s good news that the Nigerian national team won’t be affected, it also highlights the drop in quality of Nigerian players in recent times.
Back in the 90s, Nigeria had players like Kanu Nwankwo, Victor Ikpeba, Finidi George and Sunday Oliseh playing for top European clubs.
But since the turn of the new millennium, the standards have dropped, and it shows the quality of players the country has been producing.
Players from Gabon, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Guinea and Ivory Coast are well represented at these clubs, but Nigeria cannot boast of a single player in 12 of Europe’s top clubs.
Although the quality has improved recently with the likes of Victor Osimhen, Kelechi Iheanacho and Wilfred Ndidi at Napoli and Leicester City, respectively, it’s still a disappointment that the country does not have one player in any of Europe’s biggest clubs.
The fallout of the ESR is likely not going to have an effect on the Super Eagles World Cup chances, but it also shows that the demand for Nigerian players at top clubs in Europe has fallen drastically.
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I totally disagree with the fact that the quality of players we have in 1994 is better than what we have now. The lack of Nigerian representatives in top European clubs has little or nothing with the quality of our players. In my opinion, we might even have a better quality of players today coming through the ranks than we ever had as a nation.
First there has been a great improvement in football administration, sport PR, and monitization of football has also improved, in all aspects of global practice we as a nation had long been left behind. All these affected the growth of football in Nigeria. The aspect that seems to limit talented Nigerian players the most is the extreme unprofessionalism among football agents/ agencies that help our players get contracts abroad.
The question is, Nigeria has won the under 17 world championship on several occasions and even much more recently. We claim it's age cheat that makes our players fizzle away afterwards but that's not true, the introduction of MRI test in the competition since 2009 confirms that we can categorically say with 90% accuracy that we truly have U-17 teams since then.
My first question is, how many of these agents/agencies we have operating in Nigeria has successfully broker a deal that will make a home grown tallent ( not foreign born Nigeria players) secure a good professional deal with top European clubs when they turn 18? The answer is NON. Even after their PR has been done by the exploits of these players at U 17 level. The bitter truth we have to face is that, Nigerian agents/ agencies handling this young tallents simply do not have the pedegree to secure big European deals, they simply can't. They take our young players to Estonia, Latvia, etc and in few years you can't see them again.
And if these big deals fall on their lapses, they will complicate the deal untill it falls through because of greed.
Infact, many big European clubs are avoiding Nigerian tallents simply because they don't want to deal with our Agents, so pathetic.
Let me give you some facts, from 2006 till date only Mikel Obi, Victor Osimhen and Kelechi Iheanacho are home grown tallents that has been able to secure big deal with big European club with Chelsea, Napoli, and Manchester City.
Now Mikel's deal was complicate and it almost destroy his career. We all remember the transfer saga between Chelsea and Man Utd. We can call it what we like John Ola Shittu, the then agent of Mikel Obi made a mess of the deal, Victor Osimhen has to change his agent in the middle of the contract for the deal to go through so embarrassing.
I remember Kelechi Iheanacho almost had the same issue, thank God it was a cadet contract he signed initially with man City then , because he wasn't 18 then, so FIFA's rule had to apply, for players under 18, their parents/ guardian has to take a principal role, and his father took charge of the situation.
My questions is if Brazil should win u-17 championship which they haven't in recent times and not as frequently has we have done.
Will you hear the winning members of the Brazilian u-17 teams going to Latvia, or Cyprus for a professional contracts?
We will see them moving to Barcelona, Juventus, Real Madrid, Bayer Munich, AC Milan.
We need to find the problem, we need to weedout the greed and unprofessionalism in the football agents/ agencies in Nigeria to get our top tallents into Big European clubs.
When Nigeria won the U-17 in Japan 93, the tallents in those teams got big contracts Nwankwo Kanu to Ajax, Wilson Oruma, Celestine Babayao to Chelsea, and more of those teams are already well established European career just three years later by 96 Atlanta Olympics.
We need to rescue the career of our young footballers from this new generation of greedy and demonic agents.