Parabéns, "Mambas"!

Depois da vitória frente ao Burkina Faso, empate frente aos costa marfinenses e senegaleses, estes dois, colossos do futebol africano, desta vez, 29.03.09, foi a vez da poderosa selecção Nigéria. A selecção nacional de futebol, os "Mambas", "encostou à parede" a sua congénere da Nigéria. A selecção nigeriana, como se sabe, é composta por grandes estrelas do futebol mundial, como Obi Mikel, obafemi Martins e companhia. Porém, a coesão no seio dos "Mambas", que merecem os meus parabéns, afastou o favoritismo da Nigéria, durante os 90 minutos. O resultado de ontem deixou os nigerianos tristes. Emmanuel Amunike, antigo jogador da selecção nigeriana, que já ganhou o prémio de melhor jogador africano, em 1994, manifestou o seu sentimento nos seguintes termos:

“I do not think I will be able to recover from the shock in the next few days. I was so optimistic Nigeria will triumph but the reality of what Nigeria has on ground as regards our football potentials are beginning to manifest now because the so called minnows seems to be catching up on us. And they seem to be doing it at an astronomical speed. Still, many of us who are staunch believers in the team see this one poor result as temporary set backs.“The Mozambicans today (yesterday), appear to be more determined to win, while our players seem to be content to sit back to see what their opponents were capable of doing. In the process, the home team dominated play while Nigeria relied on creating the one-off and occasional chances to score. And those came in trickles. In fact, they hardly came except the near sitters that Obafemi Martins and Ike Uche had.“I know many people will want to crucify the coaching crew but beyond that, we have to face the reality; and that is that what we saw in that match was the unconscious accumulation of lack of developmental program that will lead to discovery of abundant talents from which the coaches can choose from.“We are deficient in quality players the likes that made this country proud in the past; that have made us truly the giant of Africa.“We used to have players of real quality that did in previous generations made Nigerians to be proud of their national teams. Players that did this even before my set, which made the debut at the World Cup finals in USA in 1994, came around.“We must not try to blame Coach Shaibu Amodu, or the players. I think they did their best and all we need to do now is to encourage them in subsequent rounds. Yes, we have had a bad start, but we can still make it. In fact we will make it. There are still plenty of matches to go.“Let me remind that in our campaign for the USA ’94 ticket, we lost our opening match of the final round of qualifiers to the Elephants of Cote d’ Ivoire in Abidjan. The match ended 2-1. But we went on to win our next two home matches 4-1 convincingly against the Ivorians and Algeria and picked the vital draw away in Algiers to book the ticket to Nigeria’s first Finals.” In: http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=139507

Pois é, que nos aguarde a selecção tunisina!