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Not everybody is wearing black and sack clothes or has ash thrown over themselves but don’t be fooled, Nigeria is in collective mourning. Days after being expelled from Afcon 2015 there is a miserable silence and sadness that now grips this football crazy country.

Slowly it’s starting to sink in that while the best of Africa will be going toe to toe in Equatorial Guinea come January, the not-so-Super Eagles will be absent and the highlight for Nigerian football will now be reduced to a third successive defense of Copa Lagos. For those who don’t know that’s Beach soccer.

This acceptance will slowly turn into anger and the soul searching and finger wagging will commence in earnest just as it did when Nigeria failed to make the previous Gabon Equatorial Guinea Afcon in 2012. More than likely Keshi will turn from hero to zero and just as with Siasia will be shown the door. The rebuilding process will restart again and hopefully Nigeria will be there in 2017.

The new coach will have a lot to do because the Super Eagles today are the equivalent of a fancy roadster being used for all terrain driving. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and that is simply not good enough for a country that has no other alternative sport to worship.

This team is far removed from the same team that won all the marbles in 2013. That team had a deeper bench and wasn’t so reliant on key players as the 2014 version. Then Keshi, Amokachi and Sylvanus Okpala always found a way to plug a hole or make a salient substitution. Now they were simply grasping for straws when vital players like Moses or Oboabona couldn’t dress.

Allowing Rantie to pull apart her defense like a soft loaf not once but three times while sticking with an ineffective Emenike all day long just underlines the desperation and situation Nigeria found herself in. Only when Sone Aluko came on and Lethsolonyane got kicked out did the team begin to click. But by then it was too late because just as Masahaba had warned for all who would listen over and over, this RSA team was different. And yet incomprehensibly Keshi now admits that they took them for granted. A team that has yet to be beaten in Group play.

Football is a game based solely on results and truth to the matter is that had one of Musas’ two shots not hit the woodwork but gone in, Nigeria would probably be in a totally different situation today and the Eagles would really be quasi super and celebrated.

But they did not and it is what it is. Fact is that while the Eagles have slipped teams like South Africa and the Congo have not, and the sooner Nigeria realizes this by making sure they don’t ever drop points at home to anyone – the better.

If not Nigerian fans should get used to the gnashing of teeth and that burning feeling of emptiness they now feel in their stomachs because it’s just as the philosopher Jorge Santayana said ” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Since it’s already happened in 2012 and now in 2014 hopefully this second time will be enough to FINALLY see the light. — Supersport.com