Germany, Ozil and Loew: The Clay Triumvrate.

Watching the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Germany and South Korea that has just ended, it was damn difficult believing it was the same German team that thumped Brazil 7-1 in the semi-finals of the 2014 edition of the same tournament that was on the field. The

magnificent squad that later went on to win the cup at the expense of Argentina. It is charitable saying the team was a shadow of its former self. No shadow, no matter how miserable, would want to be associated with this pathetic performance. Is this not the same team that used to be called the 'German Machine' by admirers all over the world? A moniker earned for competence, ruthless efficiency, crisp passing and wondrous organization. The squad we've just seen rather looked like a chapped-out car, a contraption coughing badly and no amount of pushing was going to make it start. Plenty of pushing there was, as strenuous as hell, millions of German fans at home and abroad doing all they can to urge on their team to glory, but Joachim Loew's team was simply dire. It was a car they couldn't even get to the mechanic. The fire-high passion of supporters would eventually get damped by a performance nothing short of a damp squib.
The prime architect of the heinous 2-0 defeat  was Loew himself, World Cup winner in 2014, now diving steeply and very fast from hero to zero. If Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira played so poorly in the first match defeat to Mexico, and the team managed to win against highly-organized Sweden in the second match, why field them again in the final match? A crucial match that they had to win, take their own fate in their own hands and avoid the risk of depending on other results from the group. Perhaps he thought Mexico would beat Sweden. Perhaps he underestimated South Korea. Perhaps he has lost his gravitas for caution, shrewdness, alertness and judgment.
He had an able lieutenant in Ozil, the hero of 2014 that started Germany's precipitous slip in the current edition long before the tournament started by that notorious photo-op with Erdogan, the Turkish president, a rabble-rouser as loud and violent as they come. With Ilkay Gundogan, another German player of Turkish origins, it was not a little rumpus they caused team preparations by posing with Erdogan and calling him 'my president'. Only God knows the inspiration they hoped to gain from the pugnacious lout? And if they thought that muzzling opposition, clamping opponents into jail without trial and screaming at real or imagined threats were all going to be insightful, the idiocy of it all was ruthlessly exposed by Mexico and South Korea. Loew shouldn't have taken the pair to Germany. Just as he was with Arsenal, his performances were slow, lethargic and horribly sloppy and his body language bespoke that of a spoiled brat, a lout quarreling with team mates and himself. The upside of it all is that he knows he is finished in international football and needs a huge redemption at club level. He might have won the World Cup but hanging around his neck now is the unwanted medal of Germany exiting the tournament at a group stage since 1938, before the 2nd World War.
It is that bad. 

Nigeria's Bizzare Public Examinations.

Nigeria's public examinations are very good indicators of what is really wrong with the country as a whole. They are excellent mirrors of the rot, the chaos, arrogance and official helplessness that characterize public institutions and the processes they run, or that run them. Technically, examinations in Nigeria are no more examinations, the expectations and darkness that should be innate to them having gone to the dogs. Sloppy leakages have been peculiar problems but the mayhem has simply gone beyond that. Internet has shattered any credibility that is left. The open practice is now for the solutions to the papers to be placed on websites specially created for such purposes by gangs that make enormous profits from such illegal ventures. On or before the examinations and it is then easy for any student with a phone to copy answers directly from the web. That might not even be necessary. A teacher could copy the answers and help reproduce them en masse for students. As exams approach, teachers and students alike race to subscribe to these websites and this mass movement can approach a frenzy. Some create whatsapp groups that facilitate the spread of answers. From teachers to pupils, billions of naira are involved in this illicit activity and it has become the fastest growing component of the Dark Web in Nigeria.
The certificates being issued by the examination bodies are simply not worth the paper on which they are printed. The worst culprit is the National Examinations Council, NECO. The West African Examinations Council, WAEC, is a regional body made up of 5 countries in the West African sub-region. Though not immune to the problems enumerated, it still manages to conduct its examinations with a semblance of decency. NECO is a body peculiar to Nigeria alone and it operates with all the stains the country can muster. Its questions are in public domain at least a week before they are written and a grim example is the vital English Language paper in the ongoing June/ July Senior Secondary School Examinations, SSCE, The leakage was so bad that NECO was forced, against its established inclinations, to cancel the paper and shift it from 10.00am to 2.00pm on the 7th of June, on the premise that new questions will be ready by then. But Nigeria is a vast country and distribution of papers must involve enormous logistics. Expectedly, the rescheduled questions could not reach everywhere and some states had to demand another reschedule. Kano State is an example and students therein will be re-writing the English Language paper on the 30th of June. In essence, different versions of the same paper are being written all over the country. No wonder education is on the rise in Nigeria.
AND THE EAGLES CRASH DOWN AND OUT.
The Nigerian national football team, the Super Eagles crashed out of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia yesterday through a late Argentine goal by Marcos Rojo of Manchester United. Once again, the country suffers an agonizing heartbreak to a late goal, just like it was in the 1994 edition of the tournament in the US. It was the second round match with Italy and Nigeria was leading 1-0 with a couple of minutes to spare and the then coach, Clemens Westerhof,  was screaming at the players to put the ball in the stands. Just hoof it away. Unfortunately few heeded him and Sunday Oliseh promptly lost the ball in the midfield while trying some daisy-cutting: someone laid a pass to Roberto Baggio and the lethal striker could not fail to ruthlessly slot in from 10 yards out, beyond the outstretched hands of the excellent Nigerian goalkeeper, Peter Rufai.
Italy was to win it in extra time through a penalty and the rest is history. It was history the Eagles should have learnt from yesterday. Just keep hoofing the ball into the stands, waste the couple of minutes left, keep on frustrating Messi and co, keep on demoralizing them. They knew they were already beaten and such tactics would have killed off the game.  

Get Leo!

The most revealing match of the FIFA 2018 World Cup has just been played. In a huge upset, which is not, with the benefit of hingsight, Croatia handed a torrid 3-0 defeat to Argentina: the supposed underdog eating up the supposed top dog. Now we have seen the second goalkeeping howler of the tournament, Ivan Caballero gifting Croatia the first goal. He could have done better too in the second and third goals but largely to blame for the defeat is the poor tactics of the coach. He seemed just content to get the ball to the front lethal trio of Messi, Aguero and Dyabala without any form of creativity from the midfield. The prompt result was the neutralization of Messi and co by the well-marshalled Croatian defence that used their advantage in height to full effect. The Croats also have stars of their own such as Modric who scored a stunner for the second goal but this match has clearly shown the brightest constellations are not made by the brightest stars.

Messi is finished in international football, there is no doubt about that now. The cup just wasn't his to lift. Life is like that and we might just parody Elmore Leonard's famous title. Get Leo! A return ticket to Argentina.

Spain vs Portugal: Heroes and Villains.

Every football match produces its heroes and villains and the FIFA 2018 World Cup match between Spain and Portugal was no exception. In fact football turned up the day everyone wanted it and the whole tournament itself would be lit up for the first time.
An expected hero turned up all right; Cristiano Ronaldo producing a dazzling, relentless display that would eventually net him a spectacular hat trick. The third goal, a result of a free kick, was especially well-taken. His team was losing, with a few minute to spare and it was a moment that require steady nerves, precision and brilliance: that called for a hero and perfectly did he answer the call.
Another hero turned up in the shape of Diego Costa. Not everyone expected him to be one, not the least his Brazilian countrymen who have been very tardy in forgiving him for turning his allegiance to Spain. Traitors, real or perceived, are not a particularly welcomed breed anywhere on earth. As a matter of fact, certain folks rather expected some villainy from him, a player notorious for his tempers and tantrums on field. They all got disappointed, Costa putting up a display in which industry and instinct got complemented by brilliance. Check out the first goal, an endeavor in which he had everything to do and he did not shy from duty. The second goal was simply instinctive, a striker's delight.
The villain that rather turned up was a most unexpected one: David De Gea, a goalkeeper that has been excellent all season for Manchester United. His attempt at Ronaldo's penalty could hardly be excused for a world class goalkeeper and he would compound sloppiness with the howler that led to the second goal, a goalkeeping blunder straight out of Robert Green's school of errors. His poor positioning would eventually lead to the third goal. Not a few argue now he helped made Ronaldo's day, gifting him his hat trick on a platter of heinous incompetence. Well, De Gea's woes might be traced to a bite of nerves and he is expected to get far better grip on himself in subsequent games.
Spain was lovely to watch in their possessive tiki-taka but some lethargy could not help peeping up. It was clear that if they had channeled their possession into greater relentless pressure especially in the final third, Portugal would have been toast. The team clearly felt pressure from the turmoil that had bedevilled it in recent days. A mayhem that led to the sack of the coach Lopetegui two days to the tournament and his replacement with Fernando Hiero, ex-national player. But there was no taking from Nacho' s goal, a strike that was as

fortuitous as it was instinctive.

World Cup of Scrutiny.

Another soccer World Cup starts today in Russia. Congratulations everyone! We really look forward to a real football fest. Which is what the World Cup should be all about: grand displays of the world most popular sport that one is ever unlikely to find on another platform. We are constrained to dwell a bit on global expectations of this fiesta because the last two editions have not been, generally speaking, all that edifying. The 2010 edition in South Africa was more notable for the hideous noises vuvuzelas were making, the poor pitches and the mayhem in the French national team than for any footballing spectacle. The last edition in Brazil did produce a footballing spectacle, the 7-1 drubbing of the host nation by Germany in the semi-finals. The Horizonte Massacre, as this incredible defeat became known, after the city in which the match was played, has been dubbed Brazil's darkest hour. And rightly so. No national distress in the country is ever going to replicate people weeping openly in the streets as the match wore on and in the aftermath. But before that, in one of the group matches, obstreperous headlines had been made by Luis 'the Snake' Suarez,  the talented but flawed Uruguayan player who had little restraint in reprising his notorious biting inclinations on the Italian player, Giorgio Chellini.
We rather want to see spectacular scissors and scorpion kicks in this edition. We don't want to see Maradona's infamous Hand of God but his famous half field dribbling that eventually nailed England in the 1986 World Cup, we simply want to see what we saw in 1970, 1982, 19...
Yet we cannot help bringing up two things to scrutiny. The first is the rather curious theory that football can be separated from politics or political behavior. This bunkum used to be promoted by the erstwhile FIFA Secretary-General, Sepp Blatter, and his predecessor, Jao Havelange.. Blatter has since been disgraced in a corruption scandal and falling into disrepute too is his theory. The host country, Russia, have been behaving very badly in the international arena. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, a region that geographically belongs to its weaker neighbor, Ukraine, against strident international opposition and that would have been a hefty outrage on its own but Putin has compounded mayhem by sowing seeds of subversion in the eastern parts of the country. Ukraine is now practically partitioned into two and the Donetsk region seems in all respects, a buffer zone to Russia. It is difficult telling what would have happened if Ukraine had qualified for the tournament but clashes in the streets of Russia between fans of the two countries would not have been out of place and the police would have had a hectic time separating them, just as it is now separating politics from football. Or the fake murder of the journalist, Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, in Kiev from the distressing comedy the relationship between the two countries has become.
Still Russia had enough mischief left to attempt to kill ex-double spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England with a particularly poisonous nerve agent, Novichok. Although Russia has strenuously denied culpability, few people are convinced and the idiotic, amateurish assassination attempt has visited on Russia a fresh round of international sanctions. England matches in Russia will surely be focus of international attention in this tournament and that will hardly be because of footballing reasons. 
Under close scrutiny too will be the the fate of the two biggest superstars in world football: Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and the Argentine, Lionel Messi. If any of these two countries fail to win this tournament, then the chance might as well be gone that they will ever be regarded as real greats. Check out all the illustrious names in world football: Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, perhaps the only thing that separates t

hem into the exalted realm they belong is that they all won the World Cup. If Messi or Ronaldo fails to win it, they will be superstars, for a period or era, but never all time greats. We hope they will strive to reach above themselves, have a magical tournament and catapult themselves into that realm that the likes of Pele belong.