Africa Press-Nigeria:
It’s been 10 years since the Super Eagles underwhelmed at their fourth outing at the Mundial, but what exactly went wrong in South Africa?
Of six Super Eagles outings at the World Cup, only three have been overseen by the same coach who piloted the national team through the qualification phase.
In 2010, Nigeria’s appetite for self-sabotage reared its head once again.
Following a third-place finish at the Africa Cup of Nations in February, Amodu Shaibu was dismissed as coach of the Super Eagles. It was the second time the former coach of the defunct BCC Lions would lose his job in those same circumstances.
Eight years prior he had been scapegoated for the perceived insubordination of his players; this time, his very competence and aptitude was called into question, despite his only defeats in Angola coming against Egypt and Ghana, the two countries that went on to contest the final.
That decision was the first in a chain of events that culminated in an all-too-familiar fate come the Mundial in June.
What followed was a hurried recruitment process, with the World Cup just four months away. A government-appointed Presidential Task Force (PTF) was set up for this purpose, and saddled with the brief of ensuring a befitting outing for Nigeria at the Mundial in South Africa.
