Our friend and spokesman of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, Ademola Olajire has a knack for coining names in the course of discharging his duties, laundering the image of the Aminu Maigari- led Board which has been struggling to assert its legitimacy from day one of its existence. In 2009 (under Sani Lulu-led board) when John Obuh assembled a bunch of ‘young’ boys to prosecute the FIFA U-17 World Cup which Nigeria hosted, Olajire nicked named one of them, Stanley Okoro ‘little Messi’ even though he knew Okoro was not one tenth what the real Messi is and capable of doing. So when I read Paul Bassey’s column titled Keshi’s work in progress in the Vanguard last week, which he said was coined by no other than Olajire once again, I chuckled and said my friend is at it again. After the white men left us to govern ourselves, men of the Public Works Department, PWD who were hardly ever seen on construction sites working, always put a sign with such inscriptions, work in progress or men at work. That is the era Olajire wants us to relapse into. What he has not done anyway is place a sign board at the Eagles training ground with his new cliche, Keshi’s work in progress. Bassey agreed that Keshi should be given time but wonders for how long the experiment would continue. While Keshi was experimenting with the friendly matches against Liberia, Egypt and Peru, many football lovers and followers alike, chorused in one voice that he was rebuilding the team and should be allowed to tinker them into a world class team like the Clemens Westerhof era. Super Eagles However, this same Nigerians are no longer comfortable with the ‘work in progress’ situation as the World Cup and Nations Cup preparations started with the Eagles struggling to survive against little teams like Rwanda and Namibia. In Kigali, Keshi’s first acid test as Eagles new helmsman, the Eagles were lucky that their host were inexperienced and could not convert the chances that came their way. The football pundits went to town after that game with various insinuations. Some said Keshi was toying with the future of the team by including home-based players in his starting line-up, claiming they were not ripe enough for the big stage while others said he was on the right track and that in fact, the home-based players outshone their foreign counterparts in that Kigali game. After a wholly home-based team lost narrowly to both Egypt and Peru in friendlies, some Nigerians were unanimous that the home- based players are gathering experience and would soon become the toast of all football lovers. After the Eagles beat Rwanda last Saturday, June 16 to move into the next stage of the Nations Cup qualifiers, captain of the team, Joseph Yobo, who has been sidelined by injury praised his mates for the victory but alluded to the fact that Keshi would still need to have the sidelined foreign-based players, claiming that “you cannot buy experience”. One fact Yobo has however, failed to realise was that he too was once a home-based player who cut his teeth in the Flying Eagles of 1999 under Tunde Disu when Nigeria hosted the FIFA U-20 World Cup and got the chance thereafter to be invited into the Super Eagles. Those who are in a hurry to have Keshi’s team whack other teams, especially the so-called minnows should also realise that the gap between the big teams and small ones is just a thin line these days. If they doubt this, they should ask five time African champions, Egypt how they lost 2-3 to Central Africa Republic on home soil in Alexandria Friday June 15. The Pharoahs are now at the risk of not qualifying for their second consecutive Nations Cup, a team that won the competition three times in a row, 2006, 2008 and 2010. It should be drummed into the ears of victory hungry Nigerians that if they believe the Eagles lost their spark and have nose-dived in both the African and world rankings under Berti Vogts, Shaibu Amodu, Lars Lagerback and Samson Siasia, then they should give Keshi a breathing space to evolve a team that would not cringe under the determination of once smaller teams like Namibia and Rwanda nor be disgraced by bigger teams like Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana or reigning African power, Zambia. Again, Keshi should realise that Nigerians cannot wait forever to see their team rise from the rubble of the past. Olajire’s sign post, Keshi’s work in progress, should be pulled down and replaced with a new one, Keshi’s Eagles on fire.