Nigeria’s Ban on National Team is Absurd
The 2010 FIFA World Cup has been interesting to say the least. From the refs screwing over England to players hitting reporters it seems like there’s been no end to the madness … and the tournament’s not even over yet! The latest piece of ridiculousness comes to us from Nigeria, where their president Goodluck Jonathan has banned the Nigerian national team from competing in international games for the next two years due to their poor play in the WC.
Does anyone else see this as a little bit dramatic? No one likes to see their team lose — it’s heartbreaking and infuriating all at the same time. But is Nigeria’s president really proving anything by not allowing the team to compete internationally? Yes, he’s proving that he’s an idiot. The team didn’t break any rules why playing in the World Cup — they just sucked. There’s no law against sucking.
Did he really expect the national team to just go in there and dominate? Even if they made it past the three games they played they would have run into a team like Germany or Spain and I’m sorry, but they don’t have a chance in that match-up.
The thing that really irks me about all this is that by “punishing” the team for their bad performance, they are potentially violating the government interference rule. And because of that, FIFA could suspend not only the men’s national team but the Under-20 Women’s team which is supposed to compete on the 13th of July in Germany. They haven’t even had their chance to play yet and because their president is being stupid they might lose their spot. That’s just not right.
Governments should have a very small role in sports. They can be fans, host parades, and give teams money for new stadiums (which I’m not quite sure I 100% agree with that all the time either), but do not sit there and suspend a team. If that were the case, teams like the Detroit Lions would have been booted a long time ago.
