Rashidi Yekini was a good footballer. Yekini scored many exciting goals. Some reports say that Yekini holds the record for the most goals scored for the Nigeria's national football team. His accomplishments on the football pitch should not be diminished by misguided reports that team members undermined his performance by "not passing the ball to him". They did on the occasions he scored goals or failed to score did they not? Not passing the ball to a "better" positioned team-mate may be petty (which is mostly not the case) but never unpatriotic.
Anyone who plays/played the sport knows that decision to hold, pass, strike the ball in competitive games are taken in quick time hence the need for an acute and functional football mind. Professional footballers know that competitive games are great opportunities to impress, make their mark, and advance their careers.
Football at the national level is a team sport played by individuals who want their team to win every game as they seek the personal fulfillment of earning fatter pay checks. These help to explain why good football coaches encourage and goad their players to fight for, win, keep, and purposefully strike the ball as often as they have the opportunity to do so even as they (coaches) work to infuse a cooperative team spirit in their players. You pass the ball when you know that not doing so is to mess with the ball at an avoidable, grave-consequence cost to your team. Ditto in hockey and basketball. Team spirit is not forced. It is built. It is never completed. It is always a work-in-progress.
Yekini played football in Europe. Did he get better service from his team members? Did he score more goals in club football in Europe than he did, with the national team for the number of games played?
Yekini did the most he had the opportunity to do for Nigeria as a footballer. His contributions to the national team are well documented and well appreciated. He was widely applauded for them. There are some who would add that he was adequately remunerated too. It may be argued that he could have done more. Let us not forget however that there is always unfinished business at the end of day.
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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of kayode ketefe [kayodeketefe@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 12:47 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Yekini: Time to root out mafia from the nation's football
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Yekini: Time to root out mafia from the nation's football
KAYODE KETEFE
The revelation was first made by the former Captain of the Super Eagles (now the Coach of the team), Stepen Keshi, in an interview hosted by the DSTV Supersport last year in which he co-starred with the erstwhile coach, Clemens Westerhof, Keshi had declared that during the USA 94 World Cup, a group of players in the then star-studded Eagles decided to frustrate the late soccer legend, Rashidi Yekini, by not passing the ball to him. This revelation was confirmed recently by another member of that team, Tijani Babangida, who disclosed in an interview with the National Mirror that the dead gangling striker was so distraught by the petty and unpatriotic gang up that he went on his kneels to beg his teammates for a change of heart. At his prime, Yekini had become too big, he was literally a living legend, he liked to mesmerised us with his goal-scoring prowess, the people idolised him, the NFF (forget the latter day abandonment) treasured him; the press adored him, splashing lavishly on him superlative adjectives and fantastic appellations like "King of goals" "the killer", " the legend" and that sobriquet spawned from a clever pun of compounding his name deservingly with the word" king" to make "Yeking!" Yekini's era was a time you would open a newspaper and saw a banner headline "Massacre!" describing the Super Eagles' exploits of ruthless whitewashing of opponents with Yekini being the chief architect of our adversaries' doom. On top of this phenomenal fame of the dreaded striker was the open affection showered on him by the then Minister of Sport, Alex Akinyele. While going round the row of players during pre-match formalities, Akinyele, popularly called "Alesco" would vigorously shake each player with a smile, but whenever he got to Yekini, the minister, clad in his trademark sartorially elegant and voluptuous agbada, would hug Yekini tightly in a warm embrace, grinning from ear to ear as he muttered some stirring compliments. Who said this innocent gesture of open acknowledgment of Yekini's genius could not have accentuated the passion of envy in his colleagues? The revelations by Keshi and Babangida inspired in this writer a recall of what a former Brazilian soccer legend and manager, Carlos Alberto Pareira, once said about African players. Pareira, a coach who had led five national teams to the World Cup,( Kuwait in 1982, United Arab Emirates in 1990, Brazil in 1994 and 2006, Saudi Arabia in 1998 and South Africa in 2010) said in an insightful analysis, that it would be very, very, difficult for an African nation to win the World Cup. His postulation was that a number of variables would have to be collectively combined to form the winning strategy. He stressed that while Africans have got some of these the remaining were sadly elusive. The Africans, according to Pareira, have got the skills, which to his rating, represent mere 30 per cent of the wherewithal, but lacked the remaining 70 per cent. The said remainder consists of the organisational expertise as evinced in the administrative acumen, preparation and conditioning; the apt winning temperament, and resilient spirit. Before Pareira's analytical submission, the farthest African had gone is the quarter final, a la Cameroon and Senegal; after his submission the farthest we have gone is still quarter final, a la Ghana in South Africa 2010, no further! When this is contextualised against the backdrop of Yekini's experience at the national team by his conspiratorial teammates, Pareira's analysis would attain some ominous significance. Unknown to that USA 94 team, It was destined to remain, till now, the best team Africa has ever produced. If only that team knew the great destiny that devolved on it, it would certainly not have succumbed to mundane issues of petty rivalry in a situation where sheer professionalism and patriotic fervor were wanted. The fact that an attenuated side of that team went ahead to win the Olympic soccer gold in Atlanta two years later is a boost to the theory that USA'94 trophy could have landed in Abuja. . But all that is now history, our team lost in the Second round to Italy. Yekini himself gave his reason for the loss: "My teammates did not support me. As a result, I was played out of the game. I never saw the ball." One Italian journalist was also reported to have said, "Italy did not win the match, Nigeria lost it!" what a succinct remark! The incident is also an indictment of our soccer administrators - there is an apparent lack of technical depth for their inability to accurately read the situation and discern something was amiss. If somebody of Yekini's profile-a tireless arrowhead of Nigeria's attacking machinery- is being deliberately starved of ball and nobody in the soccer administration circle was being the wiser, then we need to question their aptitude to administer our soccer. If on the other hand they knew and failed to change the tide, which is still negligence that redounds to their incompetence. Henceforth we must take drastic steps to ensure elimination of pernicious incidence of self-interest cliques in all our national teams, but the first step consists of putting the right personnel in our sport administration.
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