Does anyone wonder why Whites who dance completely out of tune individually, dance in complete harmony when they do group or team dancing? Individual practice; I first came to know or understand this when ‘stepping’ was very popular at parties and clubs out here in the US. I found out I could never get it, until a friend asked me if I don’t practice it at home. What? Practice to dance at home, I have better things to do; I am a good enough solo dancer and that was fine for me. I don’t have too many friends that practice to dance either; we do very little practice of anything.
But over my many years in sports coaching and studying the science of coaching, I find individual practice to be a fundamental of team sports. You must practice to know your role, you must do your job and you must execute with confidence. When you are able to do this as an individual player in a team sport, you find that the blending process is easier, quicker with less in-fighting.
Let’s all agree that our style in football development is outdated, and our new coach Sunday Oliseh must come in and use his academic football qualifications to improve the system. He must go away from excessive long camps by our national teams, this is proven to be unproductive; we camp for as long as the government can house the team. Once there is money, we stay in camp in preparation for a football event months away. Sports science tells us that there is depreciating value to long preparations in team sports; the players become complacent, the hunger for the game wanes, injuries set in and nerves are frayed. It is time we look to the better way of creating our teams. Oliseh must be able to identify what he wants individual players to work on well before he opens camp for a game. Taking local players away from their league teams in the name of national camp is destructive, give the players instructions and drills and let them get better on their own. There are a bunch of new football simulation machines available in the market today but we are not there yet.
Here is also another issue many of our team sports like football struggle with, the selection process. The fired coach Stephen Keshi got into trouble with the NFF for inviting a player to camp that did not feature in our league or any league around the wide world of football. How can that be and how can he justify the invitation? There are more scientific ways to value players in football today and I hope the coach Oliseh is fully abreast with the methods. In Europe where Oliseh played and trained as coach, the valuation of players is important in team selection. Apart from giving you all you want from your players, it gives you a paper justification for invitation. The top European teams are selected almost one hundred percent with this method.
I have argued in many sports and football forums that you cannot have an elite programme in anything if you do not have an identification process. Kings College, Lagos was an elite college programme which pulled from the best at the national common entrance examinations (that was many years ago). We must do the same for our football, create an identification process. Elite football players are generally judged in four departments; technical, tactical, psychological and physical. In the four departments are also 20 areas to value a player; under technical we have passing, receiving, dribbling, finishing, heading and two-footed. In tactical we value players under positional, situational, creativity, curiosity and football savvy. Here are the other value points in selecting players; coach-ability, competitiveness, confidence, like to train, likeability, agility, agility with ball, speed and quickness and fitness level. When you factor all these you cannot go wrong; this is the way it is done today, this is the science that the new federation boss is always talking about, let us employ it and define our football future on these terms.
If I have the chance to draw up our football coaching curriculum for football development in Nigeria, my emphasis will be on individual skill development, position understanding and early mental training. I am an advocate of a teaching manual, designed to push our football culture in a particular direction (possession-oriented with outbursts from the wings); our players and playing style become more understanding of synchronization or harmony and the discipline to do the job of playing good football. Technically my emphasis in the curriculum will be to master the functions of positions; today we have absolutely no player who is a master at his or her position in football. Tactically, it will require specific training and training players from part to whole with a lot of pressure added. Most of the football training I have witnessed in Nigeria is done without much pressure; coaches have to create game-like pressure for players to develop properly. Passing patterns will be important to developing the new Nigerian player; yes there is the old give and go, but football passing patterns today are more sophisticated; combination plays and playing through certain players on the team and I will certainly not forget set plays.
It is my wish and hope it is the wish of many Nigerians that love this game of football, that Oliseh and the federation will do everything necessary and proper to elevate us to a higher playing standard of the beautiful game. If and when we do, just like many good football playing countries have named their style of football, Brazil with the Samba and Italy with Catenacio, Nigeria may someday name its style SYNCRO SYSTEM with blessings from the great King Sunny Ade, the Juju music maestro.
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