lbrahim Sunday advices Nigeria football Administrators

Ibrahim

Sunday was African Footballer of the Year in 1971. The former Asante

Kotoko captain, who led the team to the African Cup of Champions

(predecessor to the Champions League) the same year, in a career that

spanned over two decades, also played in Germany for Werder Bremen, and

took part in two African Nations Cup. Born in 1944 to a Nigerian father

and a Ghanaian mother in Koforidua, Eastern Ghana, the midfielder, who

also played for the Black Stars at the 1972 Olympics, has coached

Ashanti Kotoko, which he led to the Champions League trophy in 1983, as

well as Ashanti Susubirbi, Ashanti Goldfields, FC 105 of Gabon and

Africa Sports of Abidjan, which he also led to the continental title in

1992. Sunday now runs the MTN Sports Academy in Ghana, a job he combines

with helping the FA’s grassroots development programme. The former

midfielder, who never hides his dismay at the sudden fall of Nigerian

football, told CHRISTIAN OKPARA recently in Accra that the Eagles would

find their wings again only if the administrators re-order their

priorities. He also spoke on other issues bordering on African

football.IBRAHIM Sunday is one of the architects of the

recent upsurge in the fortune of Ghanaian football. He is an excellent

coach, who has in the last two decades been involved in the

restructuring of football in the country known as Brazil of Africa. But

nothing in Sunday’s carriage betrays his reputation as one of the most

talented football persons ever to come out of Africa.Since

retiring from active football, the coach, who won the old African

Champions Cup as a player and twice as a coach, is currently working

with other retired players and coaches in building a strong future for

Ghanaian football. His current vocation is training the youths to become

future stars, and in the process of doing that he traverses all parts

of Ghana in search of talented youngsters.The former captain of

the famous Ashanti Kotoko, who runs the MTN Sports Academy, believes

that building up the youths is the only way a country can be sure of

getting steady supply of talents to challenge for international honours.

To that extent, he sees his job as an honourable task worthy of all the

sacrifices it demands of him.Speaking to The Guardian recently

in Accra, Sunday said Ghana’s youth development programme is a concerted

effort of the football association, which is tapping from the

experience of retired players and veteran coaches to create a bright

future for the country’s game.According to Sunday, the MTN Sports

Academy is an educational organisation that trains children from ages

eight to 10 bracket, with those exceptional ones moving on to the

under-17 cadre from where they join the professional ranks. We groom

children to acquire good education and at the same time develop their

skills to make them rounded players.“The secret of Ghanaian

football is that we came to realize that the future of every nation

rests on the youths. So, we thought we should train the youth to be

prepared to step up to defend the country.“The football

association now is seriously engaging the services of some of the

veteran coaches in the youth development programme. I am a member of the

juvenile committee trying to reorganize and lay the foundation for the

future. In the programme, we have Osei Kuffour, Odartey Lamptey, Afrenie

and myself.“These are people who played the game at all levels

coming together to resuscitate the game; so what people are seeing now

is the result of that process. But, we are not finished yet,” he

enthused.Sunday, who sees himself as 100 percent Ghanaian, still

has some fondness for Nigeria, a country he calls his second home. He

believes that Nigeria has the potential to become one of the best

football playing countries in the world because of its large population

and the number of youths who play the game.However, to rank among the world’s best,

he advises Nigeria to learn from the Ghana experience and do the right

things.According

to Sunday, “Nigeria should forget the age-old recourse to cheating in

youth competitions and concentrate on building the young ones.“You

can never cheat nature. So, if a 30-year-old man is used to play in an

Under-17 competition he will soon fade away, thereby denying the country

the opportunity of training players that will take over the senior

team.“Ghana in the dark days won some youth competitions, still

we could not step up to the main thing because the players soon faded

away. But now that we have Under-17 players playing in youth

competitions we are assured that barring any unforeseen disaster they

will mature to play in the game for a long time.”The Ghanaian

model, according to Sunday, recognizes the fans’ demand for victory in

every competition no matter the level, adding, however, that the

managers also believe that the fans would be more satisfied when they

see their team progressing smoothly.He said, “we always want to

win but we cannot win all the time. We have to first think of developing

well because if you develop well the future will definitely be bright.

But if you think of winning age group competitions today with old

players, you are shooting yourself on the foot. Nigeria can regain its

status in international football only when it develops the right youth

culture.”One other area Sunday wants the Nigerian football leaders to look into is

deployment of veteran coaches to the good of the game.According

to him, the idea of doing away with veteran coaches simply because

younger ones have emerged on the scene is wrong because the young coach

also needs to learn and develop his skills.“A young coach may not

have the patience for children, and because the older coaches have

lived with children for a long time they will know how to handle them

through all the stages of their development.“I must also say that

everybody cannot be a coach at the national team level. I believe that

the veteran coaches are more suited to dealing with the youths, so they

should be the ones working more at the grassroots.”Sunday also

advises Nigerians to forget about seeing their team back among the big

nations immediately because the damage to the country’s football was

done over time.He said, “In French they say “reculer pour mieux

sauter,” which means that you have to go back to jump forward. At the

moment the Nigerian team is not functioning the way everybody wants, so

you have to go back to the grassroots, forget about winning now, think

of developing the game and it won’t take you much time to bounce back.“If

Nigeria changes its ways and begins to do the right thing, it will

definitely bounce back to where it belongs. But if it continues with the

unnecessary quest for instant victory and continues to do the wrong

things, it will remain stagnant. There are no two ways about it.”The

Asante Kotoko legend also believes that good administration must be put

in place in the bid for sustainable development of the game, adding

that only those with the desire to work for Nigerian football should be

allowed to manage the game.He added: “I believe that the current

administrators should give way for footballers to manage the game

because what we have now are people who know next to nothing about the

game.“People come into office and tell you that they want to

learn and in the process they cause more harm than good to the game. We

should allow those who have seen it all as footballers and

administrators to run the game.“Football administration should

not be left in the hands of those who see it as an avenue to enrich

themselves. There will always be crisis in a situation where people see

football as a cow to be milked dry. Footballers must rise to take up the

mantle of leadership.”