Ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, Nigeria’s captain, Mikel Obi has recounnted what he decribed as a disastrous outing for the Super Eagles in the Brazil 2014 world cup.
From the outside looking in, there was a depressingly familiar undercurrent in the form of a pay dispute between the Nigeria Football Federation and the players. It led to a boycott of training from the latter days before the last-16 tie against France, which the Super Eagles lost 2-0. From the inside looking out, it was simply toxic.
Mikel who spoke to Guardian UK’s David Hytner, recalled “there were a lot of problems in the camp which a lot of people didn’t see, the media didn’t see – we kind of hid it under the table,” Mikel said.
“The relationships between the players were not good and there was no discipline. There was no good feeling, no good vibe.
“It almost got to people being pinned up against dressing-room walls, although not quite. It was confrontation and arguments. Players wanted to do their own thing and they didn’t think about the team.”
Mikel is looking ahead to captaining Nigeria at the Russia World Cup and the preparations will ramp up on Saturday with the friendly against England at Wembley – the scene of some of Mikel’s most memorable triumphs from his 10 and a half seasons at Chelsea. The 31-year-old is now at Tianjin Teda in the Chinese Super League.
But the past is unavoidable for Nigeria and it has shaped what is a new era for them under the manager, Gernot Rohr – a disciplinarian German – and Mikel, whose status within the setup goes way beyond wearing the armband on match days.
The turmoil in Brazil had followed similar internal conflict at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when Nigeria departed at the group phase. Mikel missed the tournament through injury but he heard the stories and, afterwards, the then Nigeria president, Goodluck Jonathan, ruled that the national team should be suspended from competition for two years. The measure would be rescinded but it illustrated the depths of the despair; the sense that the squad had become ungovernable.
“There were massive problems in the camp and that’s why the president got upset,” Mikel says. “He said: ‘Until you guys fix yourselves up, that’s it. No more.’ The public were upset but they were in support of it because they also wanted whatever was going on to stop. We couldn’t keep going to tournaments and making a mockery of ourselves.”
Read More on the Mikel Obi Interview with Guardian’s David Hytner.
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