Owerri Agog for Bet9ja Mock-nations Cup
..As Uche Nwosu Subsidizes Imo Black Cab fare for Fans
Residents of Orji in Owerri North LGA and indeed football lovers in Imo State will as from Sunday January 28, 2018 witness the biggest soccer fiesta in the East of the Niger when the Bet9ja powered Owerri Mock nations football competition finally gets on the way with lots of fun fair.
According to a release signed by the Local Organizing Committee Chairman, Prince Ray Ebede and handed to news men in Owerri, the championship designed to help develop talents especially at the grass root has the capacity of uniting the entire State and the Eastern rejion since players from far and wide in the rejion all participates.
Ebede further explained that as the name implies that it is a mock competition fashioned after the Continents biggest soccer fiesta (AFCON Nations Cup) which holds every Two years in the Continent. He disclosed that before now, the tournament was ordinarily the Owerri Mock-nations cup since 2016 when it debuted at the Old Township Primary School on Wetheral road which has been rebuilt and renamed City School, Owerri by the Rescue Mission government of Owelle Rochas Okorocha.
The LOC Chairman added that this edition is the first time; Bet9ja Company in the state will be supporting the soccer carnival that has the capacity to shun out raw football talents yearly if well harnessed.
Meanwhile, reports gathered suggests that the tournament though yet to kick off has already started attracting accolades and support with Mimi Place in New Owerri, Old English (Bar & Grill) in Ikenegbu throwing their weight behind grass root sports development.
Also, the Chief of Staff to the Gov Rochas Okorocha, Chief Ugwumba Uche Nwosu in his support has subsidized the Imo Black Cab fare for soccer fans wishing to the watch the games in Orji at the rate of Fifty naira (N50,00) instead of the normal Hundred naira (N100, 00) fare.
Blast from the Past
Kanu: Footballing Gandalf
There is a game of football so good that were its highlights not available on YouTube its existence would be thought implausible. At the 1996 Olympics, Brazil took an extraordinary team to the semi-finals, where they arrived having unleashed some of the most devastating attackers world football had ever seen. The only problem was that, in this semi-final, Brazil encountered Nigeria. More specifically, they encountered Nwankwo Kanu.
No, Nigeria were not a one-man team, any more than the Avengers expect Hulk to do all the work. But if Nigeria were the Avengers — with Jay-Jay Okocha as their Captain America, and Victor Ikpeba as Hawkeye – then it was definitely Kanu they called upon when they needed someone to Smash. Kanu was an unlikely Hulk, with about the only physical resemblance being that he was most dangerous when dressed in green. But that afternoon in Atlanta, he was just as devastating as an irate Bruce Banner. If you haven’t watched this match, I have to ask you what you’re still doing here. Nigeria went up against a squad containing Dida, Roberto Carlos, Aldair, Flavio Concecaio, Bebeto, Savio, Juninho, Rivaldo and Ronaldo (yes, that one), and – in a game as thrilling and gloriously bonkers as the ending of any Marvel blockbuster – they prevailed by four goals to three.
They prevailed because of Kanu, who late in that game ascended to heights of heroism not seen since Samwise Gamgee clambered onto the rocks of Mount Doom. Kanu, with Nigeria trailing by three goals to two, scored twice. The first time, he rescued his country from defeat with an equaliser, flicking the ball up and volleying home on the turn in a crowded penalty area. The second time, he provided one of the most happily magical moments seen in major sport. (But enough about his celebration.)
First came the winning goal – a golden goal, and rarely has a strike been so appropriately named. Kanu chipped the ball forward, so that it would fall into Ikpeba’s path; but when it failed to reach his target and bounced back to him, Kanu chose to take matters into his own laces. Shaping one way and then swerving the other, he strode to the edge of the area before lashing a low strike across Dida and into the opposite corner. As he wheeled away, soon to be engulfed by his ecstatic team-mates, he stumbled in comical fashion, like a thirsty chicken who had just come across a bottle of vodka.
That match and its aftermath were pure Kanu – a footballer as theatrical as he was decisive. In that sense, he was similar to Ronaldinho, another player whose flair always had the most effective of end products. Kanu, like Ronaldinho, was irresistible at his peak. A single drop of the shoulder could send a goalkeeper as shrewd as Peter Schmeichel lurching the other way. On one occasion, in a UEFA Champions League match for Arsenal against Deportivo La Coruña, Kanu went through on goal and threw such a magnificent dummy that he didn’t even need to break stride or touch the ball for the poor ‘keeper to go flying past. It’s the type of nonchalance you’d expect to see from Leo Messi.
Like, say, Andres Iniesta, Kanu was an unlikely-looking football genius. Iniesta resembles a mid-career insurance salesman who took a wrong turn on the way home and wandered onto the turf at the Camp Nou. Kanu seemed thin to the point of fragility, his shirt billowing off his scarecrow frame as he ran. But that same frame hid a remarkable resilience. Kanu could have died from a heart defect, but ended up captaining his country for well over a decade and playing professional football into his late thirties. In a gloriously itinerant career, he was as much a part of legendary feats at Portsmouth as he was at Ajax.
There was always something of the wanderer about Kanu – something irrepressibly free-spirited. It wasn’t that he drifted aimlessly from club to club, rather that he sprinkled his brilliance upon each town that he touched before moving on. To borrow another Tolkien reference, he ended up as a kind of footballing Gandalf, an elderly wizard still bewildering mere mortals as he ambled through the shires. And, when his odyssey finally drew to a close, we were all the poorer to see Kanu hang up his hat.
