kayode OGUNDARE
@kaybaba99
There is something about precocity. I mean having talented kid-stars who show uncommon talent at a very early age and go on to achieve their full potentials. There’s usually a dream-like quality to such stories which everyone wants to identify with.
Sadly, there’s always a devil in the details which will ensure that such stories do not end happily and, more often, regrets and nail-biting will always be the epilogue of such epic failure.
I deliberately decided I wasn’t going to weigh in on the raging controversy surrounding Liverpool’s contract-rebel Raheem Sterling for the simple reason that he’s been listening to too many people offering advice albeit wrongly but two separate but related events in quick succession is showing that the youngster may be making a fatal mistake.
Sadly, Sterling is heading down a route whose terminal bus-stop which is called self-destruction. Aged just 20, he won’t be 21 until December, the youngster seem to live and thrive on one week, one scandal.
First, there are unresolved claims about the number of children he has. Though he insists he has only one, there are reports that he might have fathered as many as four or five kids. While there’s nothing wrong in this, it could serve as a distraction from his football if he has unrestrained dalliances with women this much.
Secondly, he has been embroiled in a contract dispute with Liverpool such that the club and fans seemed to be fed up with his antics. Again, there’s nothing wrong in having a labour dispute with one’s employer but when you begin to have an inflated idea about your abilities, then such a person could be on an irreversible journey to oblivion.
For a fact, I consider Sterling to be a good young player. Yea, that is it. He’s good but not great. At least not yet a great player. He’s not at the same level Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney were at age 20.
And what worked for these players that helped them to the top of their career was the stability that the familiarity of their clubs afforded. Messi has not known any other home than La Masia and Camp Nou while Ronaldo cut his teeth at Sporting CP but found home and stability at Man United where he rose to become world best player. Ditto for Rooney who left Everton for Man United to further expose his talent on a bigger platform while Owen had established himself as the best youngster in Europe and a first team regular for England before making the move to Real Madrid.
In none of these cases did any of them have a row with their clubs before leaving. It is obvious that Sterling is taking the wrong kind of advice from those who see him as a meal ticket and opportunity for a bigger slice of the gravy pie. The way they see it is: if Sterling gets what he wants from Liverpool (some £150k per week or so) or he forces a move to any of the bigger clubs with the anticipated rise in earnings, they stand to make a decent pile of money.
What they won’t say is what they’ll do for him if his proposed move abroad falls through or he suffers loss of form and fails to just his high wages at Liverpool, that is if the clud is pressured to give him what he wants.
The boy will walk alone if the sh*t hits the ceiling and these buccaneers will move on to the next ‘big star’ available to be milked. Yea, that’s the way it is.
Thirdly, and of more concern to me personally, are the kind of worrying pictures of Sterling surfacing online where’s captured smoking or inhaling substances that could be detrimental to his health and, by implication, his football career.
Over the weekend, Sterling was at the centre of a second drugs controversy after the Liverpool forward was videoed passing out after inhaling nitrous oxide. This was after an expose of him puffing on a shisha pipe last week Sunday.
In the video footage which has gone viral, Sterling is seen sucking on an orange balloon then laughing and giggling before he asks one of his friends to give him another hit but apparently fell unconscious or asleep in a matter of seconds.
Nitrous oxide is said to starve the brain of oxygen and makes users feel light-headed and dizzy. It is nicknamed ‘laughing gas’ due to the euphoric and relaxed feeling people who inhale it can sometimes feel. Official figures show 460,000 16-24 years olds took it last year and it has been the cause of 17 deaths since 2006.
Though not illegal, the question you want to ask is why a responsible athlete who’s being paid good money to perform at the highest level every week will want to impair his ability to be at his optimum best?
The reason is not complicated. He’s gradually losing focus and football may not be too high on his to-do list any longer. In that case, if you ask me, it may be time to show him the exit door before he becomes a nut case like Paul Gascoine (even though Gazza had the ‘decency’ to finish his career before becoming an alcoholic).
Closer home, ex-international Etim Esin is a well-known case. In an interview I had with him (still available on www.isoccerng.com, click on GREAT NIGERIAN HEROES for an archive of articles on ex-players), the now older and, of course, wiser Etim put all his indiscretion down to youthful exuberance which denied him the chance of reaping just rewards for his talents and robbed Nigeria and Africa of the joy of seeing a truly global superstar of Nigerian origin.
For younger readers who missed the Etim Esin years, here is an excerpt from my feature story on him:
“…At the football pitch of the University of Calabar, sometimes in early 1985, it was a tune-up match for the great Calabar Rovers and they had chosen to play against Oron Young Stars. It was a routine pre-season friendly game that ought not to have any significance, save to help Rovers prepare for the upcoming season, but fate decided otherwise.
In the Oron Young Stars team on that day was a young boy who had finished secondary school just a few months earlier. However, by the end of the match, his name was on the lips of everybody who witnessed the spectacle which was served to spectators. Such was the influence and dominance of the youngster that he was forced to change his soccer pants three times as each one was torn to shred by the Rovers defenders who could not cope with his pace, strength and silky moves. After 90 minutes, Rovers’ officials were practically lining up to persuade him to sign for them. That young boy was ETIM JOHN ESIN.
It was not a coincidence that Etim Esin was nicknamed ‘African Maradona’ by the inimitable radio commentator, the late Ernest Okonkwo. He shared a striking resemblance with the Argentine superstar, even if their sjincolours are different. Apart from both favouring the number 10 jersey, the two are both stockily-built with thick thighs and, more importantly, both possessed an incredible amount of talent which had fans eating out of their palms as they packed stadia wherever they played.
The supremely talented Etim had always been a special talent, the kind so rare you see them only once in a generation. Born in Oron, in present day AkwaIbom on October 5, 1969, he attended St Mary Catholic School and Methodist Boys High School in Oron for his early education and at each of these schools, he was a star pupil in sport even if not the biggest physically.
From a priviledged background, the young Etim did not suffer the deprivations of most players of his generation although his father wanted him to go to school rather than take to football. This caused a rift between them for long and it wasn’t until he became a household name before the senior Esin accepted the inevitable.
His first club was Oron Stars but it was not long before he was snapped up by Calabar Rovers, the league side based in the state capital.
Etim recalls: “I finished from Methodist High School in 1984 but I was already playing for Oron Young Stars at the time. We had an opportunity to play a friendly game against Calabar Rovers and I think that was how I got my big break. I was adjudged the best player of the match and Rovers came for my signature. It was easy for me to take the leap because Rovers was the dream of every young boy at the time and was a move up the ladder for me. I joined them in 1985.”
But, like a gold-fish, Etim had no hiding place. His signature was highly sought-after and it was with the high-flying Flash Flamingoes of Benin that he pitched his tent the following season. He had Samson Siasia, WaidiAkanni, Mike Obiku, NdubuisiOkosieme and other equally talented youngsters as teammates but still emerged the leading goalscorer for the Benin side.
This sparked another mad rush for his services and he left Flash after one season to join IwuanyanwuNationale of Owerri (now Heartland). As he was shining like a million stars for Flash, the handlers of the Flying Eagles were taking notes and it was not long before he was invited to the team which was playing the African qualifiers of the FIFA U-20 World Cup slated for Chile in 1987.
The team breezed through the African qualifiers to emerge winners of the Tessema Cup for African U-20 teams and such was the quality of the team that pundits have argued that it was the best Flying Eagles team ever assembled in terms of talent.
The final squad list had players like Willy Okpara, Peter Nieketien, John Okon Ene, Ladi Babalola, Adeolu Adekola, Ikpomwonsa Omoregie, Thompson Oliha, NosaOsadolor, EtimEsin, and Lawrence Ukaegbu who had made their marks in the domestic League with various clubs as well as Nduka Ugbade, Jonathan Akpoborie, Lucky Agbonsevbafe, and Victor Igbinoba who were members of the victorious Golden Eaglets squad of 1985 so you could understand those who felt the U-20 World Cup was theirs for the taking.
After securing the Tessema Cup and bagging a World Cup ticket with the Flying Eagles, Etim raised the blood pressure of millions of football-loving Nigerians when he sneaked out of the team’s training camp to go clubbing and ran into armed robbers in Surulere, Lagos who shot him in the thigh.
The nation stood still as everyone thought the dream of seeing the Flying Eagles improve on the third-place finish by the 1985 set was going down the drain. Prayers were said and get-well wishes sent to the recuperating star on his hospital bed.
Never before, and possibly never since then, had a whole country waited with bated breath on the health of a sportsman like Nigeria did for Etim. Finally, he was declared fit by doctors and pronounced ready to join his teammates to prepare for the World Cup and suddenly hopes became high again among the fans that the U-20 World Cup title would be coming to Nigeria.”
Alas, that was not to be as Etim could not recreate his form when it mattered most and Nigeria got bundled out in the first round without winning a single game. He later joined the exodus to Europe and played in Belgium but still got embroiled in a rape scandal that prematurely brought his European career to a premature end.
Today, Etim is the first to advise upcoming footballers and kids generally at the motivational clinics he runs all over the country.
“I guess everything that happened at the time was due to youthful exuberance and my spirit of adventure. It’s what I tell the younger ones now when I do clinics and motivational talks on having focus and listening to those who know more than you do. I guess success came at a very young age for me.
Fresh out of secondary school, I was already a big star and playing for one of the best teams in the country. I was already riding a car. As a matter of fact, I think I was the only one in the Flying Eagles who had a Peugeot 505 car as at then. So life was on the fast lane and I thought I could not do any wrong. I was shot in Surulere when I went out to have a nice time. On hindsight, it was the wrong thing to do but I didn’t know that at the time.”
Will Sterling look back in 20 years and feel he’s had a fulfilling career or shake his head in regret because of the choices he’s making today?
I may sound angry but that’s because I’m very angry at the boy who has the world at his feet but is willing and ready to kick everything into the trashcan.
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