Enyeama shattering European stereotype

by Ifeanyi Ibeh





Africa has always produced good goalkeepers; the only problem is that they are not usually considered good enough for the European market since they are, in the opinion of most European coaches, not well trained in the art of goalkeeping.

There have been exceptions over the years though but all that looks set to change thanks to the exemplary performance of Super Eagles goalkeeper Vincent Enyeama so far at the ongoing World Cup, a tournament that has been marred by a series of goalkeeping errors most of which have been blamed on the tournament’s official ball, the infamous Jabulani.

English goalkeeper, Robert Green, was the first high profile casualty of the Jabulani when he parried Clint Dempsey’s shot into the back of his net in England’s 1-1 draw against the United States and he was soon followed by a host of other goalkeepers.

But Enyeama had before then reeled out an extensive lecture in the dying art of goal-keeping when he practically prevented the Argentines from dishing out a massive drubbing of the Super Eagles penultimate Saturday in Johannesburg.

The saves

The Argentines scored in the sixth minute of that game but in that short stretch of time, Lionel Messi had already had three clear attempts at goal that would have gotten the better of some of the sports more illustrious names from Europe and South America. But not this Nigerian goalkeeper who’s only known within Africa and Israel where he plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Messi continued to mesmerize the Nigerian defence and the Argentines went ahead to win the game, but it wasn’t the masterful display of the world’s best player or the antics of their charismatic coach Diego Maradona that the world was talking of after the game, but the breathtaking performance of the 27-year-old Enyeama.

So good was Enyeama that Messi, after the game, called him “phenomenal,” adding that “he was the one who made us suffer, because in football if you create chances and fail to convert them you can be punished.”

But the quiet and shy Enyeama humbly acknowledged after the game that it was simply a career highpoint for him, saying “It would be my best possible performance playing against the best possible player in the world, so it was my best.”

And, as is his practice, the prayerful Enyeama, who disclosed that he had studied numerous Messi match videos prior to the match, deflected all the attention onto a higher plane. “My secret lies with God,” he said. “Thanks to him I was able to do what I did today as he allowed me to stay calm under pressure.”

The error

Against Greece last Thursday, the curse of the Jabulani finally caught up with Enyeama when he spilled Alexandros Tziolis’ shot onto the path of Vasileios Torosidis to score the match winner for the Greeks but he still made more than enough saves to confirm his growing reputation as one of the world’s top goal guardians.

Before the Super Eagles departed for the World Cup, the team’s goalkeepers’ trainer Alloy Agu told NEXTSports that he was confident that “Enyeama will singlehandedly win points for Nigeria,” adding that the former Enyimba of Aba skipper “will prove to the world in South Africa that he should be playing his club football in one of Europe’s top leagues.”

Agu, who featured for clubs in Belgium, Holland and Turkey during his playing career, also said that it would come as a huge shock to him if after the World Cup Enyeama continues to ply his trade in the Israeli top flight. And it seems that may just be the case as Enyeama has caught the attention of a host of European club-sides most notably clubs in Russia, Spain and England.

The impending tussle

But it won’t be the first time Enyeama will be linked with a move away from Israel where he won a league and cup double last season, as he has in the recent past been reportedly linked with Arsenal whose manager Arsene Wenger was however deterred from bringing him to England after his Israeli club demanded for a two million euros transfer fee.

Wenger, who is in desperate search for a goalkeeper after the series of blunders committed by his goal minders last season, is reportedly back again for the services of Enyeama, but he will need to dole out much more than the earlier price requested by Hapoel this time around as Enyeama’s value has expectedly gone up.

Arsenal are not alone though, as West Ham, whose new manager is the Israeli Avram Grant, have also expressed an interest in purchasing Enyeama ahead of the new season, and will not have any problems meeting Hapoel’s four million euros valuation which, if it comes to pass, would become the largest amount ever paid for an Israeli league player.

Sex and the World Cup

By Ifeanyi Ibeh with agency reports



Does sex affect a footballer’s performance? This is, perhaps, the oldest and most fundamental question, not just in football, but across the whole spectrum of sports in general.

The Ancient Greeks, in the build up to the Olympics, were of the opinion that sex sapped energy. That is, it lowered testosterone, the hormone of both sexual desire and aggression.

England coach, Fabio Capello, obviously belongs to this school of thought as he has ordered his players not to indulge in sex throughout the duration of the World Cup in South Africa.

But not all teams heading to South Africa are facing a sex ban.

Fun-loving Argentines

Speaking last week in a radio programme in Argentina, the team doctor of the former world champions, Donato Vallani, said the players can have sex with their regular partners during the tournament.

“The players can have sex with their wives and girlfriends during the World Cup. Players are not Martians,” said Vallani on Radio Del Plata.

“But,” he added, “it should not be at 2 a.m. with champagne and Havana cigars. Sex is a normal part of social life and is not a problem. The disadvantages are when it is with someone who is not a stable partner or when the player should be resting.”

The doctor further noted that “the action should not reverberate in the legs of the players.”

This view of the Argentine doctor is similar to the order handed down to the Croatian team by their doctor, Zoran Bahtijarevic, six years ago, at the European Championships in Portugal, that their love-making should “not involve any excessive sex.”

A touch of samba

Brazil coach, Carlos Dunga, also has no problem with his players’ sex life, but was quick to add that the players would only be allowed to indulge in the act on their off days.

Speaking recently to the Brazilian media, Dunga, who captained Brazil to the world title in 1994, said:

“Not everybody likes sex, drinking wine or ice-cream,” before adding, “but on their off days, everyone is allowed to do what they want.”

Capello, however, begs to differ, as he will not permit any hanky-panky from his players at the World Cup. According to the English newspaper, the Daily Star, the 63-year-old former AC Milan, Juventus, and Real Madrid coach has ordered his players to stay away from sex for the duration of the tournament to ensure they are bursting with energy this time around.


Conservative Capello

Capello obviously still has fresh in his head the antics of the English team from the last World Cup tournament, where they became more famous for their off-the-field activities, before reaching the decision that has naturally not been received in good faith by the wives and girlfriends of the players.

England have not won the World Cup since 1966, and have failed to make it past the quarter finals in three consecutive tournaments, but Capello hopes to change all that and has gone further in his quest at turning it into a reality as he has ordered for surveillance cameras to be installed around the hotel, including inside the players’ rooms, to ensure his directives are carried out to the letter.

“I guess the coach only wants what is best for the team, but I think he has gone too far by placing cameras in their rooms,” said former Super Eagles defender, Nduka Ugbade, who has never participated at the senior World Cup, in an interview. He also said that “the players should be treated as adults, and not as children who don’t know what is right from wrong.”

Former Brazilian striker, Romario, once said: “Good strikers can only score goals when they have had good sex on the night before a match,” and the late Welsh forward, George Best, agreed, saying: “I certainly never found it had any effect on my performance. Maybe best not the hour before, but the night before makes no odds.” Former Arsenal and Sweden forward, Freddie Ljungberg, however, holds a different view as he says that having sex the night before a match makes his legs feel like concrete.

Nigerian example

There hasn’t been any further comments from other teams taking part in the World Cup, including the Nigerian team, but that does not in any way mean these teams have an apathy towards the subject. Rather, it could be the opposite.

“When we went to the World Cup, we were given permission to have sex,” said a former Super Eagles player who played under Clemens Westerhof at Nigeria’s debut World Cup appearance in 1994, but who pleaded anonymity as he was already married at the time of the tournament.

“Having sex takes away a lot of stress,” he continued in the interview with NEXTSports. “We played better as a result, and the coaches encouraged us to do it once in a while. A few of us were married, but in the absence of our wives we had to do it with some of the locals. But it was safe sex and we were warned not to tarnish the image of the country by making it too obvious.”

The Super Eagles were one of the best teams at that World Cup, but suffered a shock second round loss to eventual runners-up, Italy. Was it as a result of the players’ involvement in sex?

“It’s not the sex which tires out young players,” said Westerhof, in an interview published back in 2002 in the Observer Sport Monthly. “It’s the staying up all night looking for it.”

The year 2002 also saw the Super Eagles appearing at the World Cup co-hosted by Korea and Japan. Adeboye Onigbinde was the team’s coach, and he had a zero-level tolerance for sex at competitions.

“My players must get themselves prepared spiritually and this can be best achieved through total abstinence from women,” he said before the tournament. “They cannot afford to be distracted at such a critical period because women are agents of distraction.” Onigbinde’s approach didn’t work, however, as the Super Eagles failed to advance to the second round.

Scientific research

So does having sex actually improve a player’s performance on the field of play? Sportsmen have long perpetuated the theory that sex before competition saps energy. Former boxing champion, Muhammad Ali, reportedly wouldn’t make love for six weeks before a fight. Another boxer, Rocky Marciano, would excuse himself from the marital bed for months before a big bout; while Primo Carnera went further still by wrapping a rubber band around his penis when he went to bed.

Ten years ago, Ian Shrier, a sports medicine specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, published an editorial titled ‘Does Sex the Night Before Competition Decrease Performance?’ in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine. Shrier wrote that the “long-standing myth that athletes should practice abstinence before important competitions may stem from the theory that sexual frustration leads to increased aggression.” The abstinence tradition is particularly strong in power sports, such as boxing and football, in which aggression is considered a valuable trait, as it is believed that sexual indulgence draws testosterone from the body.

Emmanuele Jannini, a professor of endocrinology at the University of L’Aquila, Italy, is however, one of the most vocal opponents of this theory.

Endocrinology is the study of bodily secretions, and Jannini, who has studied the effects of sex on athletic performance, has found that sex in fact stimulates the production of testosterone, thus boosting aggression.

“After three months without sex, which is not so uncommon for some athletes, testosterone dramatically drops to levels close to children’s levels,” he said. “Do you think this may be useful for a boxer?”, he argued in an article posted on the National Geographic website.

But, he made some clarifications to the effect that sex varies among athletes.

“Some personalities need more concentration. In this case, sex may be a bad idea,” he said.

“For other athletes, a bit of extra aggression could be the difference” between winning and losing.

“In this case, I would suggest a complete and satisfactory sexual intercourse the evening before the game,” added the Italian.

Shooting Stars grab ex-Eaglets goalkeeper

Shooting Stars FC of Ibadan have secured the services of one-time Golden Eaglets goalkeeper, Laide Okanlawon for the new football season which gets underway this weekend across the country.

The 18-year-old goal minder was a member of the victorious Nigerian side to the 2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup in South Korea and he arrived at Shooting Stars from former league champions Kano Pillars, who are already through to the semifinals of this year’s CAF Champions League.

Okanlawon, who started out his career at Lagos-based Westerlo Academy, from where he teamed up with the Golden Eaglets is one of twelve new players brought in to beef up the Ibadan side who are staging a return to the Premier League after a three-year stay in the Nigerian second division.

Some of the other new players include Sylvester Ebiaku, Ben Dominic, the club’s former captain Yomi Adigun and Nafiu Taiwo, the younger brother of former Shooting Stars and Super Eagles winger Wasiu Taiwo and they are expected to play key roles in the club’s quest for a first league title since 1998, the year in which they won the last of their record fifth top flight title, a record they share with three other club sides – Rangers, Heartland and Enyimba.

“Any player brought into Shooting Stars will definitely perform a key role this season,” said the club’s General Manager, Mutiu Adepoju. “It is now up to the players to justify the confidence we have in their abilities by bringing smiles upon the faces of our supporters who have not had much to cheer about in recent years.”

Ighalo targets Golden Shoe in Egypt

Flying Eagles striker, Odion Ighalo has a personal target heading into the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Egypt and that is to finish as the championship’s top scorer, and with it, the ‘Adidas Golden Ball’.

The tournament doesn’t get underway until next Thursday but as the Flying Eagles get set to depart their Spain training base for the North African country, Ighalo is confident of leading the Nigerian U-20 teams forward line, especially in the absence of Macauley Chrisantus.

Chrisantus, leading scorer at the 2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup in South Korea, had been tipped to lead the Flying Eagles’ forward line in Egypt but he has been ruled out of the tournament by an injury he picked while on duty for German side Karlsruhe.

But in his absence, Ighalo has been finding the back of the net with relative ease in the handful of friendly games played by the Flying Eagles in Spain and he expects the trend to continue by the time the team files out for their opening game of the tournament next Friday against Venezuela.

“I always want to score, and I thank God for making it possible for me to do that in the matches we have played here (in Spain),” begins the Granada of Spain player, who’s on a season-long loan deal from Italy’s Udinese.

“My confidence is really high at the moment and I want it to continue that way by the time the competition starts.”

Ighalo’s confidence stems from the presence of the likes of Lukman Haruna, Yakubu Alfa and Rabiu Ibrahim in the Flying Eagles midfield, as well as British-based wingers, Aberdeen’s Sone Aluko and Charlton’s Danny Uchechi. And he believes he could end up as the tournament’s top scorer although that won’t be his primary target in Egypt.

“With those kind of guys around you there is no way you cannot score,” he continued. “They make things so easy for you, and if things go as expected in Egypt we will definitely be scoring a lot of goals; not just me but everyone in the team, except maybe the goalkeepers.

“I don’t know how many I will end up scoring but I will love to score in every match and maybe finish as the top scorer. But the team comes first and there would be nothing better than winning the cup.”

Winning the cup will definitely be a first for Nigeria, or indeed any African side but Ighalo feels history is about to be rewritten in the land of the pyramids.

“I know no team from Africa has ever won it,” admitted Ighalo, “but I feel we’re strong enough to make history as the first African team to win it.”

Siasia yet to name captain

Flying Eagles coach, Samson Siasia is still being secretive about the his choice of captain for the FIFA U-20 World Cup, less than a week to the games in Egypt. The competition begins next Wednesday but our players do not know who wears the armband when they file out for their first game against Venezuela on September 25.

AS Monaco of France midfielder, Lukman Haruna captained the team at the African Youth Championship earlier in the year in Rwanda, where they won the bronze medal under coach Ladan Bosso.

But Siasia faulted Haruna’s attitude and leadership qualities when he became the coach in May and declared publicly he had not decided on who will lead his own new side.

The former Golden Eaglets skipper’s future in the Flying Eagles was doubtful during the World Cup build up but Siasia eventually included him in his World Cup squad.

In the dark

“We don’t have a captain yet and we don’t really know who will be given the task,” said midfielder Sunday Abe from the team’s training camp in Mallorca, Spain.

His teammate, Yakubu Alfa also confirmed the situation but insists the spirit in camp is very high ahead of the World Cup.

“The captain has not been made known to us but we are not really bothered about that. We are working together here and all we are concerned about is to excel in Egypt.”

Haruna, as well as the duo of Rabiu Ibrahim and Alfa are in contention for the captaincy, while Odion Ighalo and Sone Aluko will also be considered for the duty.

Fasting in camp

Meanwhile Helsingborg of Sweden ace, Alfa reveals that Siasia has not prevented his players from observing the Ramadan fasting.

“Some of us are observing the fasting and we have not been compelled not to observe it. Of course I am fasting and it has not really affected me. I don’t think it’s a problem,” he said.

The Flying Eagles will leave today for Egypt via Barcelona.

Aberdeen Declare Aluko AWOL

By Ifeanyi Ibeh

Nigerian forward, Sone Aluko, has left his Scottish club side and rejoined the Flying Eagles after saying that he is strong enough to take part in the upcoming FIFA Under-20 World Cup taking place in Egypt.

The Aberdeen of Scotland player has been in the spotlight lately after returning to his Scottish Premier League side with an Achilles problem he reportedly picked up while training with the Nigerian U-20 side in Spain.

The situation was said to have infuriated his coach at Aberdeen, Mark McGhee, who threatened to pull the 20-year-old winger out of the junior World Cup, which is scheduled to take place from September 24 to October 16, especially after Aluko failed to convince him of his fitness in Monday’s league game against Falkirk.

Absent without leave

But a report on Aberdeen’s website revealed that Aluko, who previously played for English Premier League side, Birmingham, has gone ahead to rejoin the Flying Eagles without the consent of his club.

Reacting to the development, Mr. McGhee said he wants the Nigeria Football Federation to send Aluko back to the club’s base in Pittodrie so he can be examined by the club’s medical crew.

“In fairness, there may have been a bit of a misunderstanding,” Mr. McGhee said. “We’re in contact with the Nigerian FA and (we) are insisting that Sone returns to Pittodrie to be fully assessed by our medical staff before we decide whether we will give him permission to take part in the tournament.”

Spokesperson of the football federation, Ademola Olajire, informed NEXTSports on Wednesday afternoon that the Scottish club is not in touch with the Nigerian FA.

“There has not been any contact between us and them,” Olajire said. “I have been reading articles on the internet stating that they have been in contact with us but that is not true.

“The young man wants to go to the junior World Cup and they refused. Even if the boy hasn’t gone AWOL, I believe there are still other players capable of making the team but he wants to go and he has taken the matter into his own hands.”

A strong desire

In a telephone interview with NEXTSports, Aluko said his club has not taken his desire to represent Nigeria into consideration. The player, who declined to disclose his location, said he feels his purported injury has been blown out of proportion by the press and that he is capable of playing at the junior World Cup with the Flying Eagles.

“The situation is not as bad as has been reported,” he said. “I feel good and am ready to join the team. “I want to play at the World Cup and I just want my wish to be respected.”