Buffalo FC has stopped its activities for some reasons: Many logistical problems since our move to the capital city, sudden death of our dear secretary, and mostly because of lack of seriousness / ambition of FC Abuja, our partnered club whose management have not been able to fulfill their promises. Then, the director - founder, Luc Lagouche, has finally left Nigeria after 16 good years in a country with such a bad reputation but with so many interesting things inside...
Hopefully, most of our former players
further their football career in other better clubs.
The seniors with FC Abuja
Our older players who have grown up in Buffalo are still in action with the new club FC Abuja which took over the senior team in 2006. The club was promoted to the Premiere league at the end of 2007/8 season. These boys have reached the highest level in Nigerian football. So, the 1st target of buffalo (leading a small team to the league 1) has been reached..
But the 1st year of FC Abuja in Premiere
League was not easy at all; the club was never able to take off from
the bottom of the table. Things were going a bit better at the end of the
1st round but the departure of some of the best players (we can understand
them due to the poor respect given to them in this club) weakened the
team then things went worst and worst..
So, with no surprise, FC Abuja has gone back to the
lower division at the end of the 2008/9 league. What a pity with
such a big potential on the field at the beginning!
In fact, FC Abuja has never been ready to play in 1ere
league: No good preparation before the season started, no
enough funds available (because of some conflicts of interest at the top of
management),
always a "fire brigade approach" to face any situation, no care for welfare
of players / coaches, lack of ambition, not enough ability and seriousness
of a confused management who has not realized that you can't run a club in
1ere league like an amateur one with the
facilities you normally see in a team playing in a remote small local
government (just go and see their training field and their camp at that time and you will
understand what i mean!). These are reasons why the officials of Buffalo FC left the club
in September
2008 because they didn't want their names to be associated with this kind of
dirty environment with no professionalism at all (see below how many Nigerian club look like and unfortunately FC
Abuja is not different from them despite the fact that the club is owned by
the anticorruption Commmission )...
In 2011 / 2012, FC Abuja still play in league 2 (called National 1 locally) with the same bad conditions. It means that this club has no good future at all if nothing changes...
For more details of the results, please
click here to go to the page
FC Abuja
A sport and social success through Buffalo
Even if the activities of Buffalo stopped
for a while, the club is still much alive through its former players:
- More than 20 of them are now playing regularly in
Premiere league. Apart from FC Abuja, some others are key
players in Kano Pillars and became champions
of Nigeria last year. They did well in the
African Champion league in 2009.
- Some of our boys were part of
the U17 national team
in 2005 then took part of the Junior world cup in 2007.
-
2 of FC ABUJA players screened by Buffalo coach
won the U17
World Cup with the Golden
Eaglets in 2007 in South Korea. One of them, Chrisantus Mc Caulay, was the highest
goal scorer and the 2nd best player of the tournament: Congratulations!!!
He's now continuing his young career in Europe...
So BUFFALO is
well known now in Nigeria for
having brought up many
young players to the highest level.
The club, through its senior team, has reached the top of football in
Nigeria. In fact, we managed to carry a team from the low state local
division to the Premiere league. This is really a great achievement for young people
coming deeply from the slums of
Kano!
Even our coach is still doing well and lead another club,
Enyimba, to the top of Premiere league in 2010!
Outside the field,
the players are getting better income in their new
bigger club. This achievement improved their life and the one of their families. So once again, Buffalo
has reached another goal as a
social jumping board for his members.
A new road for Buffalo...
- In fact, we had the project to create gradually some football classes in a school in Abuja and then, a real academy with the help of foreign partners. The boys would be able there to forward their studies and develop their football skills at the same time. But, this project has been facing the hard frustrating conditions in the country. Indeed, Nigeria is sometimes not an easy place to establish a long term structure...
To know more about these projects, please click here and go to the projects
THE LEVEL OF THE LEAGUE IN NIGERIA
With the introduction of a new big sponsor for the Premiere league and a larger TV coverage, football in Nigeria has been improving a bit but there is still a long way to make the game more interesting and remove lot of things outside the field that have been acting as parasites poisoning local football!
The problem number 1 is the bad officiating,
often biased, and the open cheating with a home advantage (for example penalties
systematically dashed to the host team or some clear goals of the visitors
disallowed or the flag often wrongly raised by assistan referees to stop all the
actions of away teams, among others).
The NFF / NFL people are supposed to ban severely
some unclear referees, the club
officials involved in attempts of match fixing and avoid giving
board rooms points
to
some clubs but they often close eyes...
There is
also an urgent need to appoint more
competent referees, who received a proper training about the rules of the
game. The worst thing concerns the
offside position: In Nigeria, they often judge it when the player receives the ball and not at the very
moment the
ball is given to him as anywhere else in the world... And this changes everything!
So, the match commissioners have to be more professional and be able to assess
the performances of the referees properly. But, they often comply with the
them...
But we do not have to put all the blames on the referees only. If the security in the stadia was better, the referees could do a better job. Sometimes, they risk their life in the arena! Some fans cannot accept that their darling team loses at home and try to influence the referee or even beat him seriously at the end of the match if they disagree with his decisions! The hooliganism is a real bad disease here..
Then, the poor state of
many pitches have also been killing the
game here. No any culture of maintenance in this country!
The ugly image of this sport so popular has been keeping the private sector
away leaving football too
much dependant of government money only,
with all the problems created when politics and sport meet...
What a pity! The human potential in this country is so high ... It is a big waste of young African talents who find so difficult to really express themselves on the local pitches... It is also difficult for these boys to get access to the young national teams where they sometimes face officials who want to force them to sign contracts and become their agents before they consider them. Some national coaches prefer to keep older players in camp to have more chance to win with age cheating. We can easily doubt about the real age of some players who are selected in the U17 team for example and who have been playing for 4 or 5 years in Professional level. Are the Nigerian players so precocious to start playing in Premiere league at the age of 13/14???
Many clubs call themselves
professional but there are still run as amateur.
A lot of administrators are incompetent with no serious experience in
sport management, don't have a long term vision,
have no big ambitions, have selfish interests and only search for ways to
chop more money from
government. So, there is a huge waste of
resources.
Money is not usually released on time by government and officials often use the
fire brigade approach. They often have
to look for money at the last moment before going for 1 match for example or
to face coming important expenses.
Some clubs can spend much money to try and influence the
results of a game for example but often neglect the welfare of their players
and coaches who suffer a lot with salaries and other bonuses not paid for
months sometimes. Proper contracts are rarely signed and the clubs don't
often fulfill their promises towards their members.
A lot of
coaches only focus on the lucrative deals with
some players they like and who accept to share their money with them. So
they do not always select the best ones in the team. They also focus
more on quantity (more players in camp mean more money for the officials who
brought such average players) than quantity. They can easily register more
than 40 players while only less than half will play regularly during the all
season... The best players are often frustrated and this situation doesn't
encourage them to give their best here. They only think of going to Europe!
No any club
have real feeder teams and a clear program towards youth, compromising their
future...
(This page
was updated last on 20/01/12)
Our young captain
Obi receiving the trophy "TOTAL 50th anniversary"
from the hands of the MD in front of the Oba of Lagos in June
2006
F.Noy
Our coach and 2 players in U17 national team
in 2005
3 members of Buffalo
welcomed by Senator Legendre in France in 2004
Buffalo, champion all amateur leagues of Nigeria in 2003
It is the duty of
NFL / NFF
first to try to tackle all theses problems: They have to be
more strict with referees and
impose conditions on the clubs before
they can register in Premiere (facilities good enough, proper security,
solid financial situation, professional approach, respect of the
contracts, politics toward youth...). And if the referees and clubs
are not mature enough to play the game in Premiere league, sorry for them, they just
have to stay in lower level or be dropped immediately. This is what
finally happened to FC Abuja after bad results but as far as they didn't
deserve to stay in Premiere league because of lack of professionalism,
they logically went back to where they come from...
Buffalo, Best club in Kano
State in 2002
In conclusion, all these things mentioned here are not written just to openly criticize football in Nigeria but to expose the reality, call for a constructive debate and hope that a big change for the progress of this game will come to a great country with such a big potential that really deserves it...
If we want to make the game more interesting (and not just see "kick and follow"), if we want more suspense (and not results already known before the kick-off - 0 - 0 after 85 mins of a a boring game, no worry, a penalty for the hosting team will then fall from nowhere!?) if we want to make people come back to the stadium (and not watch English Premiere League on TV quietly at home), if we want to attract more sponsors, a lot of things have to change... Good luck!!! But do all stake holders really wish a change when so many of them take advantage of this situation? That's a good question...
Some
recent amazing events: Last week of
2008/2009 league,
1 of the teams needed to win and score a lot of goals to avoid relegation.
Final result of the match: 9 -0 !!! (whereas scoring 2 or 3 goals is not
common in Nigeria) Who will be surprised? At least not the presidents of the
2 concerned clubs who are also top members of NFL! As Fela used to say:
"Just luku lafu". Meaning: My friends, just look and laugh at what is going on...
And strange events are still happening in 2010: We have read that the 4
teams relegated at the end of the last season could be recalled into the
Premiere League. Then, 24 clubs would play now in the elite division whereas
it was already so complicated with 20 clubs... For what reasons? What other
funny facts are we expecting for in 2011 / 2012 season? Something is
sure, we'll not stop laughing...