Good morning Guys,
Our hopes of yet another away joy crumbled in Uyo unsurprisingly. Akwa United threw form out of the window, aided by some very weird officiating. 2-1 it ended after new signing Issah Mohammed had pulled a goal back for us. So its a somber morning for us Enyimba Faithful.
Someone said, you learn more from a defeat than from a win. Wins have a way of masking the things that need changing. Last week we were rocking our fatigued squad picking 3 points in Bauchi and another win here would have made us forget the travails of this season.
On the periphery, you can easily shrug this as a regular occurrence for every team in the League every other match day. Win at home, lose away. But that mentality aided by the environment has made our football look the way it currently is.
You can see a Remo Stars or Rangers, two teams with the best coaches in the land. Yet in the Continent, on the road, you see how bereft of ideas they are. Why? Cos the teams have been trained and raised to win at home, lose away. It plays subconsciously in the minds of the players. They’re half expecting to lose, question is by how much.
This is why the referees aren’t exempt from this cancer in the League. It is believed that a ref must blow 70-30 in favor of the home teams. And when the Refs aren’t “seen”, they can give 50-50 decisions and thus encourage the visitors that they can get something from the game. This “seeing” is to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Naira.
I’m not by this saying that every team that loses away from home got undone by the referee. I mean, some teams just are fatigued after their respective trips. For others, they are just absymal- poor performance, loss of concentration and sometimes zero technical input compared to the opposition.
My point is – we need to decide as a League the quality of our product. For years, we have not dominated Africa. We are producing way less despite the abundance of talent in the country and League. As fans, we can feel frustrated all we want but it’s about time we looked at the administrators and demand changes. Cos whatever they’re doing hasn’t worked for over 2 decades.
We lost. We return home. We can’t begrudge Akwa United much. They’ve been good neighbors. They’re in a bad spot on the table. We handed them a friendly 3 points. And wish them all the best for the season.
For solace, the Eagles won the Super Bowl. That’s something to smile about.
See you tomorrow.
