As much as am proud of the 'rising teams' of eastern Africa, i am disappointed by the two 'bigger' teams - Ethiopia and Kenya. Kenyans were having years of crisis in their league regarding its administration to the point of having two parallel premier leagues. The controversy surrounding the legality of their leagues angered FIFA and landed them a ban from international tournaments including this unsuccessful campaign while they were in the midst of it only to be reversed later. Its a no-brainer that it has negative influence on the players. Partly as a result of this and other similar sad situation they performed poorly and eliminated without finishing their schedule. I see a brighter future for them as everything get back to normal.
However, the team that can't disappoint me enough is Ethiopia's national team fittingly called by some 'walyas'. 'Walias' have run out of pretext long time ago when they reasoned out their loses by four, six and even eight goals blaming hotel accommodations, transport, food, weather, field, refereeing, spectators, you name it. Every lost game has got something to put blame on but which is always has to be other than their own weakness or their opponents better qualities. I heard no players ever admitting that they were inferior in technique and outperformed by the other team who scored six goals past them. Instead you hear them saying they played well and even better than the opponent even though they conceded half a dozen goals. I am eager to listen to what they have to say this time around.
However, i hope many people agree with me if i say those mentioned minor problems are not the root cause of our team's string of bad and humiliating results. Instead mainly because of lack of basic football techniques and to some extent lack of talent( though one doesn't necessarily need it to be great player). I won't sound too bold to say that our players are not technically fit to play modern football in any league in the world except Yemen. A team with similar speed, physical strength and technical ability like our national team have little chance of succeeding in international competitions. It can clearly be seen how far behind we are in modern football as we don't have a single player from our country playing in major European leagues like West-Africans. Our players couldn't succeed even in African league either and after few weeks of trial they were often sent back home.
Unless drastic changes are made to the way our players are trained and invest on future generation to teach modern football, we get no relief from our agony any time soon. My hope is that with all the exposure the current generation has to modern football than ever before(to English premier league of European champions league), we might see a lot of young people coming up with already developed mindset of the modern technique making it easier to implement whatever is needed to win a game. They grow up watching how Wayne Rooney attack on goal, how he controls the ball and how Fabregas plays at midfield gives them a lot of visual understanding of the game. Its up to the coaches to transform that understanding to football field. I think knowing where your teammate might be on the field without looking at him and knowing what your teammate can do with the ball in advance gives you crucial edge. You will be pre-active rather than reactive in the field. You hit the ball before it hits you.
Give your own comment on it! what do you think about our current national team?
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