They make an odd-looking couple. The one, Berti Vogts, 5ft 5in, thinning blond
hair, dressed in a bright pink shirt and chinos. He chats to a man of 6ft
6in, a light green-and-white tracksuit hung on his tall frame. This is Sani
Lulu, chairman of the Nigerian Football Association and Vogts’s boss.
They are having an animated, convivial discussion in the lobby of a resort
hotel on Spain’s Costa del Sol, a few days before departing for Ghana, where
Vogts will coach the Super Eagles, representatives of Africa’s most populous
country, at the Cup of Nations. They talk about flight schedules, visas,
preparations and not, apparently, about arrears in payment of the head
coach’s salary, as might have been the case, say, last June, when Vogts was
five months into the job and experiencing what had been a difficulty for one
or two of the dozen head coaches Nigeria have employed over the past 15
years. “I have good support from the Nigerian authorities,” declares Vogts,
without conspicuously looking over his shoulder. Those authorities are
everywhere. Earlier that day the place was crawling with VIPs. The Nigerian
Minister of Sport, the chairman of the Federal Republic’s Senate Committee
for Sport, and the chief of sport from the House of Representatives in
Abuja, the Nigerian capital, had flown back home, having flown to Marbella
to inspect the training camp and remind the players and Herr Vogts that 140m
people were expecting a Nigerian triumph in three weeks’ time.
With so many punters, so many parliamentarians wanting to rub shoulders with
the team, Nigerian football can sometimes seem awfully crowded. It has ever
been thus, but the more so since the Super Eagles gave notice to the rest of
the world that here was the nation with the greatest football potential on
its continent. Fourteen years ago, Nigeria qualified for their first World
Cup finals, whizzed straight into the knockout rounds, where they fell short
of the quarter-finals only thanks to 89th-minute and extra time goals from
Italy’s Roberto Baggio. Two summers later they won an Olympic gold medal, a
watershed for the sport in Africa. At that time, Vogts had managed his
native Germany’s victory at Euro 96. The marriage of the Eagles and Vogts
has been designed to recover a champion spirit they knew 12 years ago.
Nigeria have been slipping since then. They reached the last 16 at France 98
but finished bottom of their group at Korea-Japan 2002, and failed to
qualify for the last World Cup; they have not won a Nations Cup since 1994.
As for Vogts, the job in charge of Germany marked his management peak. There
were mixed spells with Bayer Leverkusen, Moldova, Kuwait and 2½ years as
manager of Scotland, a period that, alas, tends most readily to draw
attention to episodes like a 2-2 draw with the Faroe Islands. “MacBerti” had
been a pale imitation of the successful “BundesBerti”. I was hesitant to
guide him away from ana-lysing Nigeria and to his Scottish adventure, but he
had a strong point he wanted to make. Rather than be puzzled by the apparent
transformation from Vogts’s wretched Scotland to a side, under Vogts’s
immediate successors, who could beat France at home and away, he imagines
himself having laid some of the foundation pieces of the recent Scottish
revival. “When I took over Scotland, there was no quality in the team,” he
recalls. “I brought in a lot of younger players and gave them a lot of
experience. Now Scotland is a good team, with good players. I’m very proud
of that, you know.”
There was, he added, little comparison to be made between that job and his
current post. When in Glasgow he would watch schoolboys play and wonder from
where Scottish football’s future would emerge; when he goes to Lagos or
Abuja, he sees Nigeria’s future teeming, alive and resourceful, played by
schoolboys and truants, with imperfect balls on corrugated patches of
ground, on the streets. He sees a starry-eyed desire to emulate the
successful Super Eagles, a suffocating will just to glimpse the expatriate
giants. “It’s a big country and Nigerians are very proud,” says Vogts. “For
the players there, the big challenge is to move out of Nigeria, for big
money. In this Nigeria team, you look and see big stars playing in big clubs
in England, in Italy, and they are not only footballers, they are movie
stars for Nigerians. I tried once to organise a private camp for training in
Nigeria, ‘behind closed doors’, and there were over 10,000 people there.”
He spends around eight days a month in Nigeria, the rest in Europe, where all
his senior squad are employed. To avoid the commotion of Lagos or Abuja, it
was Vogts’s idea to go to Andalucia, from where Nigeria flew out five days
before their opening match in Ghana, the heavyweight meeting in Group B with
Ivory Coast, including Drogba of Chelsea and the Toures of Arsenal and
Barcelona. Vogts will defiantly say he is spoilt for choice, with the
trickiest decisions surrounding his forward line: the strength of Yakubu,
the zip of Obafemi Martins, or the savvy of Kanu? Not to mention how deep to
position John Obi Mikel.
It had, says Vogts, been a struggle to pare down the numbers for the final
squad, albeit that amid a lavish sprinkling of Premier League footballers,
he has also called up a pair from the English Championship. Exploring some
players’ eligibility had also kept him busy. Besides Nigeria’s 140m
residents, it has a vast diaspora, fine athletes among them, British
passport-holders among those. The prospects of Aston Villa’s Gabriel
Agbonlahor representing his father’s land have gone, the winger deciding in
favour of England; Vogts had, though, been in touch with Nedum Onuoha, the
Manchester City defender capped by England Under21s – but still eligible for
Nigeria – and with Everton striker Victor Anichebe, an Anglo-Nigerian whom
he hopes will have a chance to go to China with Nigeria’s Olympic squad.
“Anichebe has been in a camp with us, but I have other big stars, especially
up front. And he must play more 90 minutes for Everton. Whether he chooses
Nigeria is his decision. I invited him, he came. But he – or his agent –
must not put pressure on me by saying, ‘Hey, he must play’.”
Vogts can turn suddenly authoritative, whether with agents, ministers – in
Marbella, he politely told the VIPs to keep their speeches to the players
short – or his personnel. But those close to him see a man more at ease, at
62, than he may have been in his earlier days asa head coach. “Of course
he’s still the same manager, organised, prepared, always 100%,” says Steffen
Freund, Vogts assistant for the Nations Cup and a member of Germany’s Euro
96 squad. “And that’s the foundation to win something. But one point that is
a little bit different to 96 is that he’s a little bit easier-going. That
helps, especially with a team like Nigeria. You can smile a little bit more
with him now. With Germany in 96, that did not happen. We were always
concentrated, always focused. Now we work for Nigeria, it is different, the
mentality is different. Sometimes you need to think of making practice
sessions enjoyable so the players are happy.”
Put that to Vogts and he breaks into one of his thin smiles. He’s pleased to
hear it. “ Ja, ja, ja. I have had to change mentality a bit.
You can’t be permanently under pressure. Sometimes you give the players, a
small cake before the hard work. My task here is to build a good unit out of
all the good players we have. You know, Scotland also after one or two years
hada very high team spirit. But team spirit is also the German way.”
He felt the point needed emphasis. “German, German, German. You may say ‘Urgh,
the German way’,” he added, putting on a mocking, derisory voice. “But, you
know, Germans always qualify. And I’m not going to ask you the question: Is
that always true about England?”
Catch the action: when and where to watch the 26th African Cup of Nations:
QUARTER-FINALS
Feb 3 1. Group A winners v Group B runners-up in Accra
Feb 3 2. Group B winners v Group A runners-up in Sekondi
Feb 4 3. Group C winners v Group D runners-up in Kumasi
Feb 4 4. Group D winners v Group C runners-up in Tamale
SEMI-FINALS
Feb 7 Winner QF 1 v Winner QF 4 in Accra
Feb 7 Winner QF 2 v Winner QF 3 in Kumasi
THIRD PLACE PLAYOFF Feb 9 in Kumasi
FINAL Feb 10 in Accra
COLOUR CRAZY
Goalkeepers won’t have much trouble keeping an eye on the tournament’s offi
cial matchball. With a strong African flavour, the adidas ‘wawa aba’ is a
distinctive design in yellow, green, black and red based on the Ghanaian flag
BRIGHT FUTURE
The status of the African Cup of Nations has grown enormously in a very short
time. Only eight Premier League players competed in the 2002 tournament and
this year there will be 35 ... an increase of almost 350% in six years. Now
Premier League scouts are flocking to Ghana 2008 – the shop window for the
cream of African football talent
TV COVERAGE
All the group matches will be live on British Eurosport and BBCi, via your red
button, and there will be a nightly highlights programme on BBC3. The final
in Accra will be screened live on British Eurosport and BBC2 on Sunday,
February 10
PREVIOUS CHAMPIONS 1957 – Egypt 1982 – Ghana 1959
– Egypt 1984 – Cameroon 1962 – Ethiopia 1986
– Egypt 1963 – Ghana 1988 – Cameroon 1965
– Ghana 1990 – Algeria 1968 – Zaire (now 1992
– Ivory Coast Dem Rep of Congo) 1994 – Nigeria 1970
– Sudan 1996 – South Africa 1972 – Congo 1998
– Egypt 1974 – Zaire 2000 – Cameroon 1976
– Morocco 2002 – Cameroon 1978 – Ghana 2004
– Tunisia 1980 – Nigeria 2006 – Egypt
"Nigeria’s Super Eagles can help the German coach forget nightmare time with Scotland at African Cup of Nations"
Scotland isn't in Africa and should not have played in the Africa Cup of Nations. Has anyone told FIFA?
Pedant, Lyon,