Enyeama’s Retirement: Echoes of Oliseh From 2002

The premature retirement of Vincent Enyeama last week after he fell out with Sunday Oliseh brings back echoes of the premature way the present Super Eagles coach’s international career ended with the senior national team.

Although the situation in respect of Vincent Enyeama is different from what obtained 13 years ago, the underlining theme here is that both ended their time with the Eagles prematurely.

Sunday Oliseh was the captain of the team in 2002, a position he had held for a number of years at the time. That Super Eagles team was overflowing with talented players had struggled to qualify for the World Cup in Japan and South Korea in a group that contained Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan. The struggles of the team led to the sacking of Jo Bonfere who was the team's coach at the time.

As it’s usually the case, there was an upturn in this team's result when Shiabu Amodu took over as the chief coach, he eventually led the team to the World Cup after they pulled off an escapist act to turn the qualification process around. A result that typified the team's turn around was the 4-0 win over Sudan in Omdurman.

The team's resurgence saw it as one of the favourites to win the African Cup of Nations in Mali at the beginning of 2002. The team had agonizingly lost the finals against Cameroon in Lagos two years earlier. However, the team’s participation in the AFCON was plagued by disorganisation stemming from unpaid bonuses and lack of sync between the football house and the sports ministry. It was Sunday Oliseh who as captian stood up to challenge the authorities during the competition when he challenged the sports minister at the time, the late Ishaya Mark Aku.

After the heart breaking defeat to Senegal in the semi finals in which Wilson Oruma missed a penalty in extra time which hit the post. He would have tied the match at 2-2 if he had scored. Some key players had refused to take responsibility for taking that spot kick.

That match turned out to be the last that Sunday Oliseh played for Nigeria, as the Sports minister through the football house dismissed Shiabu Amodu and disbanded the Super Eagles. It meant that Nigerians were denied the opportunity of seeing a formidable team at the World Cup in Asia that year as Adegoye Onigbinde took an experimental team to the World Cup. And incidentally, it was through his experiment, that Vincent Enyeama came into team as he was plucked from Aba side, Enyimba into national limelight.

Sunday Oliseh knew what he went through in the hands of footballing authorities that ended his international career prematurely after he was denied the opportunity of playing in a third consecutive world cup. It was no surprise that a fall out with one of his players have also led to a premature retirement.

The present Super Eagles coach was used to falling out with the authorities as captain of the team over a decade ago, but for good causes it must the said, so the fall out with Vincent Enyeama brought back echoes of what happened in the early part of the new millennium when Nigeria had talented players that stood out every where.

With Vincent Enyeama gone after 103 caps to his name, he can boost of similar achievements to the present Super Eagles coach, both won the African Cup of Nations, and between them, they participated in five FIFA World Cups. Sunday Oliseh in USA 94 and France 98, while Vincent Enyeama was at Japan/Korea 2002, South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014.

There have been different things said about the premature departure of Vincent Enyeama from the Super Eagles, although he still had one international tournament in him, no doubt he was already winding down his international career with the team, a point he had reiterated several times. It is only a shame that he had to depart the way he did as the team could still have done with his experience especially in this embryonic stage of Sunday Oliseh's time as chief coach.

With the Lille shot stopper gone, the time is now for Carl Ikeme to take the reigns as the new first choice and judging by his stellar performance against  Tanzania in September in Dar re Salaam, he has enhanced his reputation. And with four caps already to his name, there is certainly more to come as he seems to have earn the confidence of Sunday Oliseh as the team's first choice goalie.

Will that be the Standard? Or it was a Stand Out?

The talk of response and lessons learnt has always been synonymous with everything Arsenal. Such talk of responses often comes after a bad result. So it came as no surprise that old clichés were copiously repeated after the win over Manchester United in the last round of Premier League matches. That win came after the defensive debacle that plagued the team in the 3-2 defeat to Olympiacos a few days earlier in the Champions League. The players led by Theo Walcott took turns to mention how the team needed to respond to an earlier defeat, while Per Mertesacker emphasised a renewed defensive focus from the team as a result of the defeat to the Greek champions.

This talk of responses has become a common trend after a defeat. The situation begs the question as to why the players cannot sustain a long period of consistency by building a momentum of results, instead of waiting for a defeat before they would play well in the next game.

There has been an uncanny knack of inconsistency and complacency from the Arsenal players. And it seems that the team's focus is determined by the calibre of opponents they are facing. If an opponent is a lesser team, there seems to be an unconscious complacency that creeps into the players that they only need to turn up to win such a match. The pattern of result this season has reflected this. This situation was reflected by the defeat to West Ham in the opening match of the season when the players simply did not turn up. Many would point to the fact that West Ham have gone on to beat both Manchester City and Liverpool away from home. Yet it did not cover for the insipid display that was that performance on the day.

The defeats to Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiacos owe much to a bout of complacency than the rotation that was blamed for those defeats.

With the key matches coming up after the international break, the question is whether the performance against Manchester United would be the standard for the rest of the season or it was just a stand out display that this Arsenal team is capable of once in a season? For all intent and purpose, the team can follow up that win against Louis van Gaal's side with a dire display against Watford this weekend. And the same team that has gone on to lose two of its opening group matches in the champions league can also go on to beat Bayern Munich a week on Tuesday. That is essentially the world of Arsenal, one littered with inconsistency.

Alot would ride on the ability of the team to stay switched on defensively for the reminder of the season especially in matches where they are expected to win on paper. Arsene Wenger's teams have seldom lacked the capacity to create chances; rather it is the capacity to stop leaking goals that has been an albatross for most of this team's life span.

Will an Arsenal team attach the same level of focus in a match against Manchester United, to a match against Watford?

The answer obviously lies in between which is where the manager comes in. It is Arsene Wenger who has to denounce the culture of complacency that has become a recurrent theme every season, where the nature of opponents determines the level of focus the team decides to accord a fixture. Wins against any opponents in the Premier League brings the three points irrespective of the opponent, so the level of focus should not be different, rather the same effort that should be geared towards winning against a lesser team should be given to a bigger team.

It would take detour from this maliase that has hunted Arsenal for seasons for this issue not to be revisited, because it has happened on more than one occasion this season, where the team needed a defeat to jolt them into action in the next couple of matches. Yet for a team that aspire to achieve great things this season, it must cultivate a culture of consistency and not wait for a defeat to a lesser team before coming out to mention a respond and renewed focus.

It was something Petr Cech harped on in an interview in his homeland last week when he mentioned that the team has to learn how to cut out emotional moments which causes a lack of focus, According to him, it was what caused the defeat to Olympiacos in the Champions League. Such emotional moments stem from losing focus or wanting to hurriedly get a match won which could lead to ball been given away that could cause an opposition goal.

The buck will never stop ending with the manager which is Arsene Wenger, it would take more than just repeated talks in the media about how his team needs to respond and focus for it to really attain anything near that. Talk has to consisten