August 15 – Last to turn up at the men’s Olympic football party in Brazil, could the Nigerians also be the last to leave? From being stranded in the US where plane tickets for the next leg of their journey to the tournament had not been paid, the African nation have fought their way through to the semi-finals and a match-up against Germany.
Their journey and fighting spirit has been so admired by a Japanese surgeon that he has offered to pay each player $30,000 if they win gold, $20,000 if they win silver or $12,000 if they take bronze.
If he ends up the paying the cash he would be best advised to pay the players directly rather than through the federation whose president Amaju Pinnick was rumoured to have been in London watching his favourite team Arsenal lose to Liverpool in the opening game of the Premier League season.
Nigeria’s progression in the Olympic tournament has been impressive. Winning their first two pool games against a strong Japanese side and Sweden, they had already topped their group before losing to Colombia.
The quarter final against Denmark saw the Nigerians return to winning ways with a comfortable 2-0 win to set up their semi-final against a slow starting German team who have now suddenly found the back of the net.
There was no chance that German organisation would leave their team running late and stranded at an airport. But the team was late to find winning form and it was not until their last group game, a 10-1 thrashing of Fiji, that they qualified for the next round.
This pitched them against Europe’s form nation Portugal but the Germans continued their goal-scoring, hammering four more goals past the Portuguese to go through to the semi-final.
In 1996 Nigeria win the Olympic tournament in Atlanta, prompting speculation that the nation and the African continent was set to conquer the world. That turned out to be a false prophesy. But could this be a rebirth?
Not if Brazil have anything to do with it. They too have now turned up to their own party with Neymar scoring his first goal of the Olympics as the Brazil beat Colombia 2-0 to set up a semi-final against the surprise package of the tournament Honduras.
Neymar, the poster boy for the Games and almost certainly its highest paid athlete brought drama and brilliance in equal measure. Having curled a shot in from 25 metres out, he then provoked a mass brawl between the two teams after a heavy challenge on Andres Roa, and five yellow cards were handed out.
This is Brazil’s third consecutive Olympic semi-final as they hunt down their first ever Olympic gold.
Semi-final schedule (matches to be played August 17)
Brazil vs Honduras – Rio de Janeiro
Germany vs Nigeria – Sao Paulo
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