Euro 2016 and Rio 2016-different strokes!

I have just finished watching the semifinal match of the on-going Euro 2016 championship between home team,France, and current World Champions, Germany. How more cruel can football be?

Germany that did all the playing and France did all the scoring. France that looked only solid in defense and ordinary everywhere else, feasted hungrily on two errors committed by their opponents to register their two goals and their place in the finals. Germany that looked confident, organised and classy could not break through the French defense except on few occasions throughout the 90 minutes duration of the game.

Now France are poised to win and not even Cristiano Ronaldo, who is psychologically on fire now to reclaim his title of world’s best player for 2016 from Lionel Messi should Portugal win, would be able to stop them.

The France/Germany match was not a classic by any standard but it reminded everyone about football penchant to defy predictions. Euro 2016 has been an absolute treat with most matches very keenly and closely fought, countries once considered minnows and in the championship to make up numbers rising up to the challenge, fighting hard and defeating ordained champions.

Euro 2016 has been a real thriller, a feast and treat, an eye-opener once again for those that have the ‘eyes’ to see beyond the superficiality and shallowness of thinking that a team must win the trophy to be considered a winner. Some defeated countries have welcomed back their ‘gladiators’, celebrating their heroic performances as if they had won the championship.

Here in Abeokuta I have been a part of the global audience enthralled and entrapped in the spirit of the football fiesta in France. The matches have impacted the lives of people in this city. A few minutes to match time the streets rapidly empty of vehicular and human traffic; bars and restaurants fill up with people; loud cheers and boos fill the night in this usually quiet laid back city.

Without question the matches have been providing people temporary relief from the economic and social hardship that has gripped the land. It does not matter that African countries are not involved. People simply take sides and support the teams of their choice. As one team is beaten allegiance shifts to another.

The matches are won and lost and everyone peacefully retires to discussing great performances and defining moments of magic or madness during the matches. Euro 2016 serves as a reminder of the several good and beautiful things around football (and by extension, all of sport).

Sport is simple, the rules are clear, the athletes are artists, every game is unscripted, yet the drama and passion are unmatched by anything else in the world. At Euro 2016 even the threat by terrorists and political agitators have been relegated to the background as the world continues to enjoy the football aperitif.

Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Europe have damned the consequences and traveled to France to join in the party that has raked in billions of Euros into the economy of France.T he other unquantifiable gift to humanity, of course, are the memories that everyone would take away, and the stories would become folklore and heroic metaphor for years to come.

Unfortunately, even as I can not wait for July 10 to come for the final chapter of this feast of football, a part of me is dreading the thoughts of the morning after when I will wake up and be confronted with the reality of Nigeria’s participation at the 2016 Olympic games starting in a few weeks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

This is another festival of sport of an even bigger dimension. I should be looking forward to it but I am not. As a two-time Olympian, a proud embodiment of the Olympic spirit, what I see as Nigeria’s preparation for the Olympics is the worst ever in my country’s history. Nigeria has lost it completely.

Nigerian sport has lost direction completely. I do not understand or know how, or why things have deteriorated this badly. Things have never been this bad. Nigeria once espoused the true spirit of the Olympics, sending its nationals to the games to promote the country positively and to showcase the country as a potential global sports superpower.

Now, even the potential-status has diminished to nothingness. When the Centennial Games were to be held in Greece in 2004 the organisers searched through the archives of Olympic history for a moment that best captured the essence of the Olympics. It finally settled for the picture of 4 Nigerian girls that had taken part in the finals of the sprint relay event 8 years earlier in Barcelona.

It was the run of a lifetime for the Nigerian girls – their anticipation when the race ended without a clear winner; how the girls waited and watched the slow motion replays high up on the giant screen at the stadium; how they erupted and flew into the air in an orgy of celebration the moment it became clear they had crossed the finish line ahead of the other team in contention with them with a hair’s breath and ‘infected’ the capacity crowd in the packed terraces; how they did a lap around the tracks in a sprint with the capacity crowd on their feet applauding them all the way.

All of these captivated the world. Why? The Nigerian girls were not celebrating because they won the race. They did not. They were actually fighting for the Bronze medal position, third place! Yet, in 2004 that race was replayed to the entire world to advertise the spirit of the Olympics.

The scrolled and voiced message at the end of the advert was: ‘You do not have to come ‘first’ to be a winner’. That advertisement was shown all over the world for several weeks showing Nigerian girls as the best ambassadors of the Olympic spirit and the Olympic movement. That was only 12 years ago. The race itself took place 24 years ago. 20 years ago, 4 years after the Barcelona feat, in 1996, two Nigerian athletes managed by me went to the Atlanta Games and came back with Gold and Silver medals.

Since then Nigerian sport has been on the decline, so much so that this year sport was not even featured as one of the 34 identified priority areas of government for implementation of the 2016 budget. So, on the eve of the Rio 2016 the situation report reads something like this: no facilities, no infrastructure, no institutions, no athletes, no plans, no development, no funds, nothing, just the deafening silence in the corridors of power and hopeless acquiescence of their subdued victims – the Nigerian athletes.

The reality is that it is too late to do anything now. Rio 2016 is going to be another jamboree and a monumental sporting disaster. When the team returns from the games barren, with tales of woe as ‘medals’ probably the country would wake up from the present nightmare. For now, permit me to return to France. I am counting the minutes to kick off time to watch France become champions of Euro 2016. If you are wondering why I am tipping France to defeat Portugal, it is simply because I cannot recall how the Portuguese got to the finals of Euro 2016. The team has been so ordinary I can’t even recall how they won any match!