Winning Fans & Losing Employees The Benin Way.

February 9th, 2010 | by: chris | View Comments

Some countries choose to “shake things up” after a dismal continental tournament, pinpointing a problem. Nigeria have sacked Shaibu Amodu, after what can only be assumed were ritual pregame bong sessions, in order to put on a good show in South Africa.

Some countries choose to relive the glory days after a disappointing collection of games. Italy did this by bringing back Marcello Lippi after the ugly experiment known as Roberto Donadoni.

Others combat failure by ducking under their desks and doing absolutely nothing but mumble a bit of prayer. Raymond Domenech says hello.

Benin have gone an entirely different route – they’ve blown up the whole goddamn thing.

After a poor showing in the AFCON group stages, Benin have fired everybody. The entire “technical and playing staff” has been kindly relieved of their patriotic duties after the abysmal showing, or so the Benin FA thinks, which saw them finish third to such minnows as Egypt & Nigeria.

Well that’s fair.

“A decision has been made to dissolve the national team and its technical supervision,” a statement read. “In the decision, taken by members of the executive committee, they took into account the indiscipline, lack of patriotism and lack of team results at the African Nations Cup.

“The federation, in conjunction with the sports ministry, will set up a new code of conduct and now start out on a new basis with all players who are called into the national team in the future.”

Perhaps a little more fair if they did in fact show a “lack of patriotism”. Though what exactly does that entail? Quaking at the sight of Nigeria or Egypt? Kissing the bag with less vigor than for club? (There’s a battle for club v country waiting to sprout here.) Or maybe lip syncing the words to the national anthem?

Two of the three – indiscipline and lack of team results – sound like the product of a team which would be ranked, oh, 107th by ELO. Which right now happens to be…well would you look at that: Benin.

But when you run the show, you get to make the calls. Calls which will likely stand until AFCON qualifying comes round again.

And should this whole “firing everybody” thing not work out quite well, some other ways to forget poor tournaments:

- Pull a China and pretend it didn’t happen.

- Pull a Nigeria and send all the senior players down to the U-21’s to win some youth tournaments and renew national enthusiasm.

- Pull a Brazil and rename your national team…Brazil.

Foolproof – all of them.