In Football, The Grass Is Everything! —Odegbami

Why is it that it is only Uyo, a small, laid back emerging metropolis located in the southernmost part of Nigeria, that has the only stadium facility with FIFA’s approval to host Nigeria’s Grade A international matches?

It is ridiculously unbelievable, yet it is true. With Nigeria’s records of achievements and football, no other stadium in the country can host the highest levels of football!

The answer to that question is very simple, too simple to be true. In fact, it is so elementary that, for a country with Nigeria’s reputation as a football-crazy nation, it is shameful.

The answer is not rocket science.

It is the grass. The flat, lush, beautiful, well-manicured, green grass on the surface of that magnificent stadium in Uyo that stands out majestically from the rest of the stadia around Nigeria.

Even the MKO Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, the Federal Capital City, the most beautiful and most modern sports complex in the whole of Africa, is ‘dead’ of major activity, even beyond football, because the surface where the big football matches is not good enough.

Ironically, it is the presence of these big matches, hosted here, that can impact, enliven and transform the entire sports complex into a social hub for all sports followers in Abuja.

The grass field is that important and that powerful in the football eco-system. The simple fact, most often underrated, is that it is the grass turf that rules. It is everything in football. Nothing else compares, and nothing can be an alternative. It is as simple as that.

It may not be easy for the ordinary person, ungrounded in football played at the highest levels in personal experience, to fully appreciate it and understand the complex connections that the grass on a football field has with the entire football experience, the entire industry, the players’ complete development, the serious followership, the fanatical crowds, the best television coverage, and attractive sponsorship opportunities. Even the magnitude and severity of injuries that players suffer on the field of play is d terminus by the quality of turf used in a game. That’s why for example, no amount of insurance money will make a Messi, a Ronaldo, and that level of players to accept to come and play in Nigeria outside Uyo, today!

That’s probably why Nigerians never got the opportunity to watch Kanu Nwankwo, Jay Jay Okocha, Victor Ikpeba and a whole legion of other great professional players to return home to play out the evening of their careers in domestic Nigerian football.

The existing football fields for matches will render them ineffective, optically worse than even the good players in the present domestic league that may never rise to become greats.

That’s why foreign coaches handling the national team don’t find players in the domestic leagues good enough.

Wrong grounds and bad surfaces, breed less effective players. Bad grounds render coaching and training sessions less effective. Bad grounds make for poor viewing both from the terraces and on television. Bad grounds make manipulation of matches by referees easier.

I often appear to be a lone voice on this subject. The only other voices are silent whispers that are partners in the business of selling alternative poor products, and using fancy words and ‘FIFA approvals’ to make big business of selling their products.

Synthetic and hybrid surfaces are good, but limited in their use in football with ambition to be the amongst the best in the world. These fields do not take the business of football or the game itself to the highest levels.

Incidentally, things were not always the way they are now.

30 years ago, the destruction of the most important single ingredient in the development of football as a business, football as a beautiful game, and footballers as the prime actors in the game, started.

The most powerful of those heading the sports sector at the time in Nigeria were neither grounded in the football game nor in its administration.

They came into power, and with their limited knowledge, vision, experiences and understanding embarked on ‘renovations’ of facilities that ended in the destruction of Nigeria’s football grass fields.

Since then the domestic game of football has floundered and has not been the same again.

The excavation and replacement of the grass turfs on the grounds of the National Stadium in Lagos, Liberty stadium, Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Kaduna, Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium, Enugu, and, later, the Township Stadium, Calabar, ostensibly with better turf, led to the start of the destruction of the football industry in Nigeria! The ‘disease’ spread to Bauchi, Lagos, Ogun, and other States.

This is not a small or flippant statement to make, and the facts bear me out. All the listed stadia have stopped being venues for big international matches, their other sports infrastructure have become infected and have become carcasses. European clubs that used to come to Nigeria for pre-season training (believe me that happened in our history) and also for friendly matches, stopped coming. The various stadia that used to host international Grade A football matches could not hold them any more.

The stadia started a slow and steady deterioration that has now left them in bad shape, idle and shadows of themselves, with only sweet memories of the past to remind us that we once enjoyed terrific football matches on the hallowed grounds, and that the stadium complexes that can no longer host big time matches are now like big barren trees that can no longer bear fruits.

For 30 years, despite the best effort of successive administrations, Nigeria has stumbled and fumbled fruitlessly to build a solid football industry in the country. The crowds will not return in huge consistent numbers to venues. Corporate sponsors are not attracted as they once were to the domestic leagues with stadia filled to capacity from match to match around the country.  Domestic television coverage disappeared when the leagues on TV became so unattractive to the viewer that no one could bear the ugliness of the pictures being churned out as football on TV – poorly packaged products competing with the well-packaged options from the Europe.

The Nigerian league could not produce players exceptional enough to play directly in the national team without going abroad first for some honing and transformation.

Why do retiring Nigerian professional players from leagues in Europe not find Nigerian football comfortable enough to return to at the end of their careers, even as that is the established culture in Europe and South America?

Why are sponsors not falling over each other to put their resources behind sponsoring the leagues?

Why do foreign coaches not find local players good enough to play directly in the national team?

All these questions have been begging for answers for 30 years.

Last week, I went to watch some trial matches somewhere in Lagos. Some foreign scouts were on a scouting expedition to Nigeria.

After watching 4 teams of players, I gave up and left. There was not a single player that displayed any exceptional talent. They were all good players running around and trying hard to impress without success. It was frustrating to watch.

The synthetic ground, newly laid and looking beautiful from a distance, crippled the players. It appears I was the only one that appreciated what was going on. So, I left in tears hidden behind my eyes.

Played on flat green lush grass, the game and the same players would have been completely different! We would see them express themselves better and be able to gauge their true potentials.

That’s it! The most important single ingredient in football, in the development of players, in the evaluation of players, in eye-friendly coverage on television, in developing meaningful team tactics and strategies, in making the game attractive to play and to watch for spectators, in pure undiluted football entertainment, in reducing the tendency for serious injuries, is the surface on which football is played.

Nothing beats the green, rich, lush green grass! That’s what makes the difference, what elevates the game to the highest level in training and matches, what brings the spectators to watch spectacles, and what draws sponsors like bees to nectar.