I have just returned from a trip to Nigeria for the burial of my beloved sister, whose sad, sad story (http://www.ogorip.com/) has ignited the internet and brought new focus to women issues in Nigeria.
But thats not what am about here.
In the midst of the pain and the sadness though, I had some small window to follow football, specifically the UEFA champions league (UCL) semi finals.
What particularly struck me was the passion of huge sections of Nigerian football fans against Barca, which led me to repeatedly asking- why do Nigerian football fans hate Barcelona so much?
Why do Nigerian football fans, who are famed for their love of beautiful football, the same fans who rebelled against Amodu and his depressing team, hate a Barcelona team that has set new standards for art football and redifined time-space dynamics in football, while being extremely successful?
As if this was not enough, even the pundits have joined in the act!
Every foul call in favor of Barca (they pronounce it 'Barka') is greeted with derisive chants of 'PDP'..., and the players labellled divers, even for the most obvious fouls! Every yellow card for a Barcelona player should've been a red card! And Messi? The only thing they did not wish was the pox on him! To many of them, the Ronaldo v Messi debate was long settled in favor of the Madrid player...
In writing this, I know that I will come under attack from the horde of Chelsea/EPL androids out there. And for full disclosure I am a longtime Liverpool fan.
But even if the roles were changed and Liverpool was in the same position as Chelsea this week, while I would be happy with the win, I would simultaneously be saddened by the spectre of a multi-million dollar team, replete with experienced internationals resort to prehistoric football to win a match, however important that match may be. The sight of a Didier Drogba repeatedly chasing huge punts downfield from Petr Cech, left me wondering if I was somehow caught in a time warp, trapped in Wimbledon in the 80s. Worse still, to see the talents of our Jon Mikel Obi, a close contemporary of Messi at the world youth championships in 2005, reduced to chasing shadows, was physically painful.
And as the game wore on and Chelsea brought football frther to its knees, the English commentators would explain each downfield punt as, just another way of playing football. True that...
Its also another sure way to kill football. John Lennon asked us to imagine...so imagine a football in which all critical games were reduced to the Chelsea approach at the Nou Camp...We would either all become androids or fans of netball!
I pondered these on my long flight back to the States, through the flight from Abuja to Amsterdam; then during the long layover and through the connecting flight to Memphis..Late at night as my last flight made its way to Philadelphia, it finally struck me....
The EPL has made football zombies of Nigerians...
