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Nigeria Retracts Massive Overreaction, Un-Bans Soccer Team

Nigeria failed to advance past the group stage of the 2010 World Cup, but the team’s performance wasn’t that bad – they lost by one goal to Argentina (perfectly understandable) and Greece, and tied with South Korea, which advanced to the round of 16.

But their early exit wasn’t enough to satiate the nation’s president, Goodluck Jonathan (still in disbelief that’s his name), who suspended the team from international competition so they could take some time to get the house in order. The problem with this: Jonathan’s meddling led to FIFA considering a Nigerian ban of their own – the dreaded double banning.

Luckily, today both suspensions were averted, with Jonathan wisely lifting his ban just in time for FIFA not to institute theirs. A ban would have been counterproductive – is the best way for a team to get better really for them not to expose themselves to teams from around the world? Change the coach, turn over the roster, but let that roster get experience.

Of course, the convenient timing of the un-ban (today was the deadline to rescind it) makes it appear that all it really was was a scare tactic, something to make the players think hard about their performance and motivate them. If this was the case – well, it still seems a bit much for Jonathan to insert himself into the team’s affairs at all. Leave it to the team and the organization that runs it.

Then again, if my name were Goodluck Jonathan and I were the president of a nation and I wore the hat at left everywhere, I’d probably feel like I could do anything I wanted, too.

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