The English Premier League is the one and only colonial power ruling all over Nigeria
today.
The beautiful game of football being played in England has put Nigeria’s murky politics
in the shade as a sidekick, a pathetic second fiddle.
Manchester City Football Club won the league title on Sunday, pipping fit fighting
Liverpool FC by a single point.
Liverpool, with the irrepressible Jurgen Klopp as manager, was gunning for winning the
unprecedented Quadruple of Carabao Cup, FA Cup, League Title and UEFA Champions
League but Manchester City stopped the team halfway by bagging the coveted league
title.
The bragging rights thus remain with Manchester United team that in 1999 won the
Treble of FA Cup, League Title and the highly coveted UEFA Champions League.
The EPL that has completely colonized Nigeria almost always serves up a spectacle.
Manchester City that ended up winning the title was down 0-2 to unfancied Aston Villa
with 15 minutes to go until staging a five-minute miraculous comeback.
Liverpool that had won both the Carabao and FA Cups by beating Chelsea FC in
pulsating penalty shootouts had to lick a very bad wound because the team was within
minutes of upstaging Pep Guardiola’s high-riding Man City.
The erstwhile mighty Manchester United had to settle for 6 th place that only guarantees
the team a place in the lowly Europa Cup.
Man United had its lowest points haul since the inauguration of the Premier League,
scandalously conceding as many goals as it scored, thereby ending up with zero goal
difference.
Arsenal FC flattered to deceive in the team’s drive to earn a Top Four finish but had to
settle for a fifth placing after losing ground to their fierce North London rivals Tottenham
Hotspurs coached by the dogged Italian Antonio Conte.
Now that the English Premiership is over, many Nigerian ball fans may suffer withdrawal
symptoms until the next season kicks off.
The other major European leagues have ended but the remarkable one for me is that AC
Milan won the Italian Serie A Scudetto for the first time in 11 years.
By totally colonizing the minds of Nigerians, the English game has elicited a lot of laughs
all over the country.
Chelsea FC boasts of the noisiest supporters, and it has been pointed out here and there
that when these rowdy supporters scream in Nigeria it is heard in faraway Stamford
Bridge in London and ends up distracting the players!
My personal experience of a Chelsea supporter happened when I travelled with one in a
vehicle from Lagos to the East and had a stopover in Benin to eat, but the man could not
be seen again to board the bus because he had gone off to watch a match of his darling
club!
Other English clubs have their nerds here in Nigeria such as the irate Manchester United
fan who drove into a crowd of Barcelona fans in Calabar after Barcelona had beaten his
club to win the UEFA Champions League!
There was the Arsenal fan that was nearly stabbed to death by a Chelsea fan in Lagos
who reportedly woke up after the marathon surgery with the exclamation: “Up Gunners!”
My son Chimel who was watching a match on television with me at Stamford Hotel,
Awka could not fathom the acute and chronic palpitations of a Liverpool fanatic until I
told him that the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankley had once said: “Some
people say football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that kind of attitude. Football
is much more than that!”
The English league has over the years had some famous managers and players who can
run well with their feet and their mouths.
The former great Nottingham Forest manager, Brian Clough, who won the European
Champions League back-to-back, once reportedly said: “Our team was good on paper but
unfortunately the game was played on grass!”
The controversial Jose Mourinho once tagged the great Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger
as “a specialist in failure.”
The legendary Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, when told Real Madrid
wanted to buy his star player Cristiano Ronaldo in 2008 retorted: “I wouldn’t sell them a
virus!”
Well, there is the Qatar World Cup to look forward to by football aficionados, but then it
can be a deadly game as Pablo Escobar of Colombia discovered in his grave after he was
shot dead for scoring an own goal!
“Who wan die?” as we say in Naija.
No wonder the Super Eagles of Nigeria thought it very wise not to qualify for the Qatar
World Cup!
