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Anthony Nwakaeme bizarrely continues to be overlooked by Super Eagles' selectors despite his exploits for league leaders Trabzonspor
Anthony Nwakaeme bizarrely continues to be overlooked by Super Eagles' selectors despite his exploits for league leaders Trabzonspor
In eight days, Nigeria will take on eternal rivals Ghana in a winner-takes-all encounter for a place at the 2022 World Cup.
While at this time it remains unclear where this meeting will take place, what is not in doubt is who will be playing in it, at least on the Nigerian side of things.
Unlike at January's Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), the Super Eagles will be able to call upon the services of some of its most influential attackers. The likes of Victor Osimhen, Odion Ighalo and Emmanuel Dennis were conspicuous by their absence in Cameroon, but have been named in the Nigeria squad to take on the Black Stars.
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It is perhaps a measure of the quality available to Austin Eguavoen that Nigeria's most consistent and impactful performer this season has been left out altogether.
For all that Osimhen is the spearhead of Napoli's Serie A challenge, Umar Sadiq has been in rude form in La Liga 2 and Odion Ighalo is having an enjoyable jaunt about in the Middle East, it is Trabzonspor forward Anthony Nwakaeme who has arguably been Nigeria’s best player in Europe.
The 32-year-old has scored 11 goals and assisted 10 more for the Super Lig table-toppers in 23 appearances, helping the Black Sea Storm to a 15-point lead in the standings with 10 games to play. Barring a catastrophic collapse, Abdullah Avci’s side will lift their first league title in 38 years come May.
Nwakaeme’s recent form has been particularly eye-catching. Over the last five matches – spanning four weeks – the former Hapoel Beer Sheva player has recorded eight direct goal contributions (either a goal or an assist). At 32, there is reason to believe he is only getting better: injuries and COVID have done little to slow him down, and he is on course for his best scoring season since moving to Turkey in 2018.
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This makes his continued lack of involvement at international level all the more baffling.
His sole international appearance came back in 2017, in a dead rubber World Cup qualifier away against Algeria. Following that, he was ignored for the rest of Gernot Rohr’s Super Eagles reign, with the German’s bias for a young team and against players in lower-profile leagues contributing to Nwakaeme’s absence. It also did not help that he did not put his best foot forward, although some of that owed to being fielded out of position as a lone striker in a much-changed lineup.
However, Rohr’s departure has not brought respite for the forward, who continues to be overlooked.
The point of this is not necessarily to make a case for Nwakaeme’s inclusion, as his performances speak for themselves quite eloquently. It is instead to explore some of the rhetoric around his continued exclusion; to mine for merit in them, as it were.
Perhaps the single loudest refrain whenever Nwakaeme is brought up is to the effect that Nigeria has a surfeit of players in his position jostling for a place.
There is some truth lodged in there, of course. In the wide areas, the likes of Moses Simon, Samuel Chukwueze, Chidera Ejuke, Ademola Lookman, Henry Onyekuru, Samuel Kalu, Alex Iwobi and Emmanuel Dennis are all available for selection. After the centre-forward position, this is Nigeria’s one area of strength (at least numbers-wise).
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However, quite why this should be legitimate grounds for the exclusion of Nwakaeme is difficult to understand, because already it implies the absence of a level playing field. It suggests that the national team is a closed shop, thereby meaning players on the outside of the “bubble” have to work harder or do more in order to get in, a situation that would fly in the face of any pretensions of a meritocracy. That there are other options is not a fact that should penalise any one player. (This is without even necessarily considering the cases for each individual player as, objectively, few have performed at the same level as the Trabzonspor man this term.)
The other frequently cited objection is to do with Nwakaeme’s age.
Now, at 32 he is clearly no spring chicken. However, again there is no clear reason why this should be a hang-up. If, as under Rohr, the point is building a young team, then that is fair enough, but there has to be a reasonable limit to that ambition when a player is performing as well as Nwakaeme is.
For all that youth suggests promise, a young team is not an end in itself. The Super Eagles is not restricted by age, so why arbitrarily impose that limit on yourself? Besides, even if crashing the average age of the squad was a key performance index for the coach, rewarding one over-30 player in outstanding form is hardly going to prevent that aim. There is not a glut of Nigerian footballers of that age performing at such a high level that one would worry about a slippery slope effect.
Again, this is far from a treatise for Nwakaeme to be called up to the national team. In truth, he would face a proper struggle to beat out the competition for his favoured position. However, that is not really the point, especially if, as we are led to believe, a meritocracy is in place; he, at the very least, deserves the same consideration as everyone else.
In not calling him up, as well as in the reasons/rationalisations that are cited to support that decision, an uncomfortable amount of contradictions and illogic present themselves.
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