Exemplary Emenike… -Joins African Stars Boosting National Teams -Shows Generous Heart With $50,000 Promise Super Eagles striker, Emmanuel Emenike has set a new standard of patriotism and team spirit in the Nigerian national team, following his decision to give the entire squad $50,000 if they finally qualify for next year’s World Cup in Brazil. As novel as the move appears in Nigeria, though, it is something that had been head of in the past among a handful of other African players, especially from the West Coast. Leading the list of other players who set the example Emenike has now decided to follow is Liberia’s former top striker, skipper and the only man to be named world, European and African player of the year in one simultaneous swoop, George Weah. He was later joined in the same gesture by Mohammed Kallon of Sierra Leone, Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast, Seydou Keita of Mali, Emmanuel Adebayor of Togo as well as the only non-West African player among the lot, Samuel Eto’O of Cameroun. They all blazed a trail which soccer lovers across the continent agreed was edifying and worthy of emulation, but no Nigerian star decided to join the clan, until Emenike’s pronouncement earlier this year. Dramatically, though, just like Weah, Drogba, Adebayor, Kallon and Eto’O all extended their patriotism beyond supporting their national teams financially, a couple of Nigerian players like Austin Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Joseph Yobo and John Utaka have doled out cash and largesse to motherless babies homes and performed several humanitarian gestures at home and abroad. However, while Kanu has become legendary with his heart foundation and Utaka has a similar project going, none of the other Nigerian stars before Emenike ever thought of giving something specifically to the Eagles, which is where the former FC Cape Town of South Africa, Karabükspor of Turkey and Spartak Moscow of Russia striker now stands out among the stars of the three-time African champions. Emenike, who got injured during the AFCON 2013 semi-final against Mali and subsequently missed the Nigeria’s 2014 World Cup qualifiers away to Kenya and Namibia as well as the FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil, said he has been an Eagles fan since he was a kid. The power playing forward, who only this week rejoined Fenerbahçe of Turkey from Spartak of Russia, got his Eagles debut in an international friendly match against Sierra Leone at Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos in 2011 and is now looking to excel with the squad at next year’s World Cup, the qualification of which he believes his dollar-bonus will motivate his colleagues to achieve. To this end, from a local interpretation of figures, Emenike is ready to dole out about eight million naira of his personal hard-earned money in appreciation to his colleagues should they qualify for the World Cup. He would, thus, follow in the footsteps of Emmanuel Adebayor, who time and time again had to play Father Christmas, bailing out his country from financial straits by offering to pay allowances and bonuses. Emenike will also follow suit with Cameroun’s Samuel Eto’O, who offered incentives, providing plane tickets to ferry his fellow players down for national team duty. What about Didier Drogba of Cote d’Ivoire, who went a step further to use his position to bring political peace to his country and is now in the process of putting back into the society of his birth with the establishment of a world class football academy. Before them, George Weah was legendary in the support of the Lone Stars and he singularly made sure that his country did not withdraw from any continental engagement due to lack of funds. In the same vein, Mohammed Kallon, in a rare show of patriotism, decided to shoulder single handedly shoulder all the financial weight of his country’s national team, Leone Stars. “I promised the whole team 50, 000,000 dollars if they qualify for the world cup in Brazil. We have a team who can make this country proud, and I’m doing this from the bottom of my heart to motivate the team. “I’m not doing this to intimidate anybody but just to show my total support to the team because I grew up supporting the Super Eagles. I’m really behind the team,” said Emenike.
Posted on: Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:09:52 +0000