Angola – Thorn in the flesh?

Angola’s supporters wave ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) 2024 quarter-final football match between Nigeria and Angola at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium in Abidjan on February 2, 2024. (Photo by FRANCK FIFE / AFP)

I do not like football matches against Angola.  Since that fateful day of August 19, 1989, at the National Stadium in Lagos, when a match ended tragically with the death of Nigeria’s great and gifted midfield ‘general’ Samuel Okwaraji, I have not got over the depression that sets in whenever the Super Eagles are to play against the Palancas Negras of Angola.  Today, I find myself in an unusual situation. I am writing this on Thursday night. I cannot preview the match against Angola coming up on Friday because this would be published on Saturday. Unless I can predict the future, there is no way I can either do a preview or a review of that most important high-stakes’ match that will determine the fate of both countries.  I have a problem with Angola. I never played against them throughout my career in the 1970s and 1980s. They did not even exist in the radar of major African football at the time.

Since then, however, more as a result of the psychological effect of that August 19, 1989 sad event in Lagos, any mention of the country bodes something negative.  Decades after the Okwaraji episode, as if Nigeria was in a trance, the country took its last qualifying World Cup match to the one place that the Nigeria Football Association under Ibrahim Galadima had no business taking the match to – Kano.The players played on a totally unfamiliar bad turf, under unbearable scorching heat, and ‘lost’ by playing a draw.  It was against Angola again. They halted Nigeria’s dream of going to the 2006 World Cup. That