Player-power and the power of football!

Player power forced Spanish FA Chairman, Luis Rubiales, out of office following his ‘indiscretion’ of kissing national team midfielder, Jenni Hermoso, during the closing ceremony of the 2023 Women World Cup in Australia.

I have the writer’s block.
I am mentally browsing and thinking.
I have Nigeria, Spain, and Cristiano Ronaldo on my mind.

Nigerian football is not thriving as well as it should because of the bedeviling internal crisis that endlessly rocks elections into the board of the federation, and throws up administrators that do not represent the best of the country’s rich football stock.

Elections into the board always stirs up a storm that never clears up throughout the board’s tenure, only to repeat itself again at the next elections. This ‘game’ has been going on for almost three decades, ‘protected’ by an all-powerful FIFA with vested interest in even the worst of federations. No one or governments can do anything about it.

So, under the protective umbrella of FIFA and its statutes, presidents of national football federations have become tin-gods, untouchable under almost all situations. The consequence of this, of course, is the unbridled non-accountability by most federations to any supervisory external authority.

In Nigeria, the current board was directed by the federal government that funds most of its activities and under which it exists as a parastatal, to amend its constitution in order to accommodate sidelined stakeholders in Nigerian football. The board has not moved a muscle to amend anything, turning its back to previous pledges and going on with its activities and business. The world can go take a running jump.

Many Nigerians erroneously think that this powerlessness against federation heads is limited