Some Were Gold, Some Were Dross ( And in Nigeria that word is euphemism for underwear) — Chile 87’ A Tale of Expectations, Frustrations and Disappointments
(Original title of this sports report published in the Newswatch edition of November 9, 1987. The Nigerian National Library is the best archive for back copies of Newswatch magazine previously unavailable online. The Report of the Only Black Photo-journalist Who Covered The Finals of the 1987 FIFA Junior World Cup in Chile, where I met my first real love Ana Maria Bustos, Provides An Excellent Overview Of How Data Is Mined As A Channel for Fake News and I believe was a reason for the introduction of goal line technology for FIFA tournaments, emphasized by this feature “ Fifa’s Zvonimir Boban reflects on corruption, rebuilding — and VAR at the World Cup https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43828869 “
© By Ben Edokpayi
As Mirko Jozic, the Yugoslav Coach, sat on the sideline watching the spindly Zvonimir Boban advance towards the white spot to take his decisive kick in the penalty shoot-out with west Germany October 25th, his mind must have wandered briefly to the night before that competition started October 10.
That night, in his room at the posh Carrera Hotel in Central Santiago, Jozic in the company of the team’s doctor, Mladen Cepulic and Miomir Nenkovic, technical committee’s Secretary of Yugoslavia football association, sat down in the 44-year old coach’s room analyzing their chances in the fourth FIFA/Coca-Cola Junior World Cup in Chile.
[ I interviewed the Yugoslavian team in the coach’s room. And FIFA Executive Zvonimir Boban and Robert Prosinecki, former Red Star Belgrade Coach, were there. The ’87 Yugoslavian team basically was the team that represented Croatia at the 1998 World Cup in France.
Boban is now a FIFA Executive and the falsehood from Chile could be one of the reasons for FIFA’s introduction of goal line technology. )
By the time they rose from that meeting none except the demure Mirko, gave the boys a chance of advancing into the second round of the competition. All they hoped for was a possible loss against hosts Chile and then take their chances against Australia and Togo in their Group A matches. The team’s cautious optimism was understandable. In October 1986, the Yugoslav’s football association disbanded the entire junior national team because of the uncommitted attitude of players and moreover, the Yugoslavs had arrived Chile without five of their crack players, including star player Komnenovic, Nedelkovic of Dinamo Belgrade.
But here they were on this cold winter Sunday evening pitched against west Germany in the final of the junior World Cup. And Mirko must have wondered if he was in Fantasy Island where Utopian dreams are given a breath of life. Before the encounter, Mirko had described the possibilities of Yugoslavia winning the final as minimal. Robert Prosinecki, the captain of the team whose consummate performance was enough to earn him the best player award of the competition, was ruled out of the final because he already had two yellow cards. Prosinecki’s yellow cards from the games against Brazil and East Germany were a perfect fit. His team-mates nick-named him “yellow man” after the Jamaican reggae artiste, because of his blonde hair.
Igo Stimac, the reliable Yugoslav midfielder, was also side-lined from a red card in the crunchy semi-final against East Germany. So also was Zoran Mijucic, a key player in the efficient and mobile Yugoslav team. This was enough to make any coach despondent. At a post match news conference, the Yugoslav coach called Richard Lorenc, the Australian referee who handled their semi-final encounter with East Germany, their 12th opponent in the game. Lorenc had been awarded four yellow cards and one red card that put the Yugoslav in a tie for the finals.
But against West Germany in the final this setback did not matter after all for Yugoslavia because Boban assured victory for his country by making no mistakes in his penalty kick which won the match for Yugoslavia 5–4. Unlike Boban, Marcel Witeczek [Some more Hex — I only interviewed White people as an official journalist accredited for the games. Ana Maria Bustos of Concepcion was my only passion in Chile. And I was dining with her on dates when I was not working as a journalist.] the tournament’s highest goal scorer with seven goals, fluffed his own penalty chance of making West Germany Junior World Champions. If Witeczek had scored his spotkick, the Germans would have been champions for the second time after their triumph in the 1981 edition of the championship in Australia. The West Germans put paid to the hopes of host-country Chile, when they white-washed their team 4–0 in the second semi-final in Concepcion.
The Chileans with bloated ego after their 1–0 win over Italy in the quarter final in the quarter-final, were turned inside out by the calculating efficiency of the West Germans.
Brazil who had earlier been considered as strong contenders for the championship , returned home with their tails between their legs after they lost to the Yugoslavs in their quarter-final match, which many considered the most exciting game in the championship [And analyst must have gotten creative with the use of the words ``tails between their legs”.] Though the Brazilians lost 2–1, no thanks to Prosinecki’s ingenious freekick two minutes from regulation time they left no one in doubt about their mastery of the game using space intelligently and making every move meaningful and beautiful
[Dumb imagination by a Xenophobic Analyst — Time for an Overview Virginia. Here is a typical reason why Edward Snowden scrambled away.]
lefthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN06mVgBHck
The introduction of Paulo Henrique Andreoli {Some more food for thought] the Fluminense midfielder [My middle name is Nse] with a good turn on the ball, upped the pace and brilliance of the Brazilians. Andreoli, whose game against the Yugoslavs was his first in the competition, was used by coach Gilson Nunes because of pressure from the Brazilian press at the competition. However, the well-knit pattern of the Brazilians, coupled with the exciting play of Bismarck Barreto [think Barrett/San Pablo/Richmond June 1991] Andres Alves Cruz, William Oliveira and Cesar Carlos Sampaio, the Santos centre-half back who was a perfect shoo-in for the right full-back position in the team (after first choice Paulo Cesar broke his shoulder), were all not enough to push the Brazilians past the fast, strong and equally skilful Yugoslavs. The disappointment of Brazilians over their team’s showing was so deep that Nunes became an outcast in Brazil.
Three days after the team arrived home Nunes took his wife out for dinner at a popular restaurant in the Copacabana area of Rio De Janeiro and all he received from the few who recognized him were cold and blank stares that seemed to say “We are tired of failures in Brazilian Soccer. Nunes could not even find the courage to attend the exciting match-ups between Flamengo/Botafogo and Fluminense/VascoDaGama at Maracana stadium on the weekend of October 25/26, even though many of his players in the national team play for these teams. He told Newswatch he preferred to take his children for a walk. [Another paragraph for analysis. Yes, I and Chris Okojie, Sports Editor of Vanguard spent a day in Rio de Janeiro about four weeks before this on our way to Concepcion. Yes we attended a game at the Maracana and were in the Press Box with the great Gerson. And yes we played volleyball, watched a Carnival on the Copacabana, and flirted with some women in the Carnival, but I never slept with anyone in Rio de Janeiro. And why should that matter I was single and like Bob Baldwin sings “everybody is beautiful in Brazil’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybwqnFNAGQA&list=RDybwqnFNAGQA&start_radio=1&t=0]
Nunes told Newswatch he only had two weeks to prepare his team for the competition because his players were not released on time by their clubs, unlike the 1985 champions who were also under his tutelage. He spent five weeks grooming that squad which also beat Nigeria 2–0 in an epic semi-final battle. After the loss to Yugoslavia, Nunes offered apologies to Brazilian fans and added: “But we are holding our heads up because we were able to show the strength of Brazilian football. As I said earlier, if we had a little bit more time to train, we would have done better.”
If the Brazilians were disappointed , Nigerians grieved over the dismal performance of the Flying Eagles. Going into the Junior World Cup, the Flying Eagles looked every bit potential champions of the competition (I travelled with the team most the qualifier games in Africa, including their last qualifier game in Mogadishu, Somalia. [Because of security threats in Mogadishu we went straight from the stadium to a reception at the home of the Nigeria Ambassador straight from there to the airport where we were flown home by a Nigerian Air force C-130 Hercules.]
Something about the team evoked great confidence and expectations not only at home but also among the Chileans who looked upon them as prima donnas of Group B in Concepcion.
But it took just two games against Brazil and the neophytes from Canada for the Eagles to hold up the mirror showing how clumsy, inept and technically deficient they were. Four goals conceded against Brazil and an 88th minute equalizer by the Canadians narrowed Nigeria’s chances of qualification and showed how uncoordinated the Eagles defense could be. The third match, in which the team required a miraculous 3–0 win to qualify for the quarter-final, was even more disastrous. Two quick goals in the 23rd and 24th minutes sealed every hope for the Nigerian team. The first goal was ludicrous with Marco Carrera running through the flat-footed Nigerian defense to direct an angled header that bounced off the crossbar and goalkeeper Willie Okpara’s back-heel into his own net (One of the funniest own goals I have ever seen.) Indeed, the eight goals conceded by the Eagles in the entire competition had different stories to portray about the porous Nigeria defense. For Okpara, who conceded only four goals in his 14 appearances for African Continental Bank in the national league this season (1987), the eight goals that went past him in Chile must have been the nadir of his fledgling career.
For Christopher Udemezue, the coach of the team, the woeful performance of the team has certainly placed his career on the line. The 51-year-old aged so quickly after the landslide victory by Brazil that Lawrence Ukaegbu was worried. [Should Lawrence, an attorney and classmate from SPC be worried? Was he contacted for information about Saint Patrick’s College, Asaba?] The Iwuanyanwu (Owerri) striker said “the coach aged so quickly after our defeat that I was so afraid for him. I was surprised how he recovered quickly from that defeat.”
But deep down, Udemezue never recovered. After the game against Italy, he blurted out: “If I had known this is how these boys would come and disgrace me here I wouldn’t have come.” More humiliation followed for the coach after the painful 2–2 draw with Canada. Unable to hold back his disgust, Nigeria Football Association Chairman John Obakpolor, an Air Force Group Captain, accused the coach of having “no pattern, no defense and no match-plan” as the team walked dejectedly and tearfully off the field.
The Eagles’ dismal performance in Chile did not justify the adulation they received from their teeming supporters in Chile during the competition. It was not only the Chileans who were shocked at the Eagles’ poor outing. Abdulla Al-Dabah, Saudi Arabian Member of FIFA executive committee and match commissioner during the Nigeria versus Brazilian match was so disturbed by the Eagles’ dismal play that he continually glanced towards the Nigerian bench during the match, as if to ask Obakpolor: “What is wrong with your boys?” Al-Dabah, who saw the Golden Eaglets play in Canada, feels (IAbdullah K. Dabah was interviewed in Chile in 1987. I was not in Saudi Arabia 1989 and not sure if he is still with FIFA. However I think he was with FIFA when there was a vote for the World Cup in South Africa. His name is listed along with Mohamed Bin Hammam (Qatar) Dr Chung, Makudi as those who voted.) the under-17 team would have fared better in place of the Flying Eagles in Chile. [Another paragraph for analysis. I was not in Saudi Arabia for the 1989 edition of the FIFA World Cup as some people have inferred. I covered the tournament from Lagos. Was this interview in Chile with Al-Dabah the link to Saudi Arabia 1989?]
The fortunes of Nigeria and Yugoslavia in the championship were somehow ironic. Before the championship began, the Nigerians were rated high and even regarded as one of the strong contenders for the championship, while the Yugoslavs did not even give themselves any outside chance of going beyond the first round. But as fate would have it, both countries proved pundits and themselves wrong. The reversal of roles was not by happenstance. For the Yugoslavs, victory came through hard work, discipline and an amazing spirit of camaraderie, while the Nigerians showed they were just not ready to play football at that level, technically, tactically and psychologically.
