7 years after his unceremonious retirement from the national team, Nigeria’s super eagles still struggling to find one of such high qualities as proxy or better still a replacement for Vincent Enyeama.
Enyeama, a product of the Nigeria professional football league was pivotal to Enyimba’s glory days winning the CAF champions league back to back on their own accord as a unit. Perhaps his standout performance playing in the domestic league was the launchpad he needed to earn him a place in coach Adegboyega Onigbinde’s squad to the Korea/Japan 2002 FIFA world cup where his heroic save against Paul Scholes of England announced him to the global stage.
The exit of Enyeama paved the way for the emergence of Carl Ikeme who would have been a better replacement or even usurp what Enyeama did, but no thanks to the ill fated leukaemia that scuttled the hopes of what promised to be a pyramid status he was destined to achieve.
Years in retrospect, handful of other goalkeepers varying from the likes of Daniel Akpeyi, Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Francis Uzoha, Maduka Okoye & several other fringe goalminders in that similar status have all been tried but non seems to have bettered their predecessor which has provoked a huge outcry from different quarters wishing they can turn back the hands of time & return Vincent back to the national team fold.
When you offend grace, the iniquities of the father’s will visit down to the third & fourth generations according to the bible. Enyeama was badly treated, even when he lost his mother, the handlers of the national team showed no remorse, worse still, he was striped of his captains armband.
It is true that Vincent certainly will vacate that position someday especially when he advances in age, but doesn’t it look like Nigeria is already reaping the fruits of the ill treatment that was dispensed to him, forcing him to an unseasonable retirement from the national team?
Enyeama is still very much here, he needs no pouring of libetion as a way of making an offering to a deity. let the authorities do the needful & take this clarion appeal to make efforts to make peace with him else, this school boy errors our current crop of goalkeepers are making will persist & Nigerians will continue to go berserk wailing in pains & in anguish.