Chidi Nnanna

Water Walker | Hope Dealer | Chain Breaker

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which my the prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride

[Collingwood 🇬🇧 @admcollingwood]

This is sort of funny, and Brazil have definitely got worse, but it misdiagnoses the problem. In fact, this is a story of what has happened to society and with our economies, and the ideology of our ruling elites.

The first point to accept is that *all* football nations have lost their particular style: there has been a flattening of the way in which teams play. I first started watching football as a very young boy in the late eighties, and through until the early 2000s, most of the big nations maintained a distinct way of playing. The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Brazil and England all spring to mind. But two things have happened -- the first connected to the latter.

First, the Champions League (and later the Europa League) means that the best teams in Europe play each other almost every week during the season. That provides a consistently present interface for an accelerated exchange of ideas, formations, and tactics. But it also acts as a kind of gain of function research for football: there is now an extremely rapid cycle of tactical, transfer policy/player selection, and fitness innovation, response and counter response. The football OODA loop has never been tighter.

Second, and connected to this, there has been an extreme version of the Pareto Principle income inequality that has happened among western societies as a whole. Wealth, partly due to the Champions League, and partly due to the Premier League, has accrued to a smaller and smaller number of teams, even as the size of the pie, due to the massive increase in TV revenue in Europe, has expanded beyond all recognition. This means that all the best players in the world end up in the same handful of clubs. We can name them: Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Juventus, Bayern Munich, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona. Furthermore, with the advent of global scouting networks and post-Moneyball databases, this means the best players from anywhere in the world, often at young ages. Remember when an unknown player would have a great World Cup and find himself playing for, say, Tottenham or Monaco or wherever? Those days are gone. We know about every player in the most minute detail. There is no mystery. The good players are already in Europe.

The first time I noticed this process of wealth accumulation was with the great Ajax team of 1995. I was only just a teenager, and that team was like a revelation for me in terms of the way football could be played. All of them (bar Danny Blind and Frank Rijkaard, who were an earlier generation) came up through the Ajax academy system and blossomed at the same time. They played in the Ajax/Dutch style (4-3-3, with two wingers that stayed very wide, and a centre back pushing into midfield when they had the ball, holding possession playing in the opponent's final third). But within two seasons, the entire team was broken up: Davids, Seedorf, Klijvert, Ovremars, Rijzeger, Kanu, Litmanen, even Van Gaal, the young manager -- they'd all gone to richer clubs elsewhere. In the 1960s or 70s, they'd have stayed together and won multiple European trophies. In England, we saw a similar thing with Southampton. Newcastle are suffering the same now.

All this means that players don't stay in their home environments and countries, with their clubs, and the process of mimesis breaks down. Add that to the first point, related to the way intra-European football forces a flattening through various mechanisms, and you have what we see now.

A couple of World Cups ago, the Netherlands played a 3-5-2, to my absolute horror. The Netherlands playing without proper wingers! Now we have a Brazilian team that has two Arsenal players, two Man U players, one Newcastle player -- even a Bournemouth player, for goodness sake. And they'll all have had the majority of their careers outside Brazil. Some will have left when they were 15 or 16, scouted by Shaktar Donetsk (famous for bringing in young Brazilian players) or Real Madrid. Why are we therefore surprised that they play like any other European team?

The Netherlands style lives on -- but through Barcelona and therefore the Spain national team (via Cruyff, and thence Guardiola), not in the Netherlands national team. But the Brazil style (a languid slow, slow, slow, punctuated by sudden bursts of incredible skill, raking passes, speed, and crackerjack long shots) is dead. When better Brazilian players emerge in future, and maybe they return to winning World Cups, they'll do so as Europeans would, not Brazilians. The German and Italian styles are also dead. The English style is also pretty much dead, although that was an evolutionary dead end in terms of International Football, so we do not lament it.

This, rather than boozing or religion, is the reason for what we see with the Brazil national team. I find it deeply sad. But no doubt the neoliberal progressives who run our countries will view it as a great success.

@AaronBastani @WilliamClouston @georgegalloway @jj_bull

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Because Argentina won? Phew

[Cross˚ @Elkrosmediahub]

"In Argentina, blacks do not exist, that is a Brazilian problem” -• Former Argentina President, Carlos Menem, 1996.

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

@PureMinD__ Football greats that are not known to make wrong calls or are not biased? Please talk another thing.

Always looking for excuses

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Omo.. We de always find excuse

[Ayo FBI @PureMinD__]

I wouldn’t even call this an African team matter, there were too many systematic robbery that resulted in the eventual loss for Egypt.

- Argentina’s first goal was offside but was ruled a goal by drawing the line before the ball landed
- The same foul that made them cancel Egypt’s second goal was committed on Salah and the other person in the box 18, VAR didn’t even check.

Many technical fouls that were called against Egypt were allowed for the Argentines. It’s a coronation imo.

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

African teams lose their leads 25 minutes to the end of the games. It's a pattern. Meaning there's a problem...

We'll rather chuck it up to institutional bias... and some conspiracy against Africa

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Were just looking for conspiracies in this World Cup ehn... Everything thing na gang-up

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

One account says something and plenty others parrot it and y'all swallow hook, line and sinker. Smh

[. @tosinmm_]

Brazilian Twitter is so fascinating.

Learning about the way evangelicalism has changed things vs Catholicism.

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

@budgetOdogwu They outplayed Egypt in the last 20 - 30 minutes.

That's not just luck.

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Omo

[‘nyerishi eli ogborama esq. @budgetOdogwu]

Terrible manager . 2022 gave this guy a reputation . He’s a fucking shit coach . Who bows down to Messi . Shit coach . Absolutely shit coach

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Lol

[Chikwere @NwekereNdoki]

@ogbonnatochuk20 Umuahia mall is managed by a south african mall that is divesting from Nigeria

[The Souvenir Whisperer 🎁 @Inzaghi1]

God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through?

Numbers 23:19

This is the word of God for July 5, 2026…

[The Souvenir Whisperer 🎁 @Inzaghi1]

For by You I can run against a troop, By my God I can leap over a wall.

Psalm 18:29

This is the word of God for July 4, 2026…

[The Souvenir Whisperer 🎁 @Inzaghi1]

I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.

Psalm 37:25

This is the word of God for July 3, 2026….

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

You couldn't do this before?

[T. @__T_touch]

We are grabbing the opportunity with both hands. We are not lazy. 🇿🇦🙏🏾❤️

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Game should have been left to go to penalties

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

Belgium have been outclassed

[The Souvenir Whisperer 🎁 @Inzaghi1]

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.

Psalm 23:6

This is the word of God for July 1st, 2026…

[The Souvenir Whisperer 🎁 @Inzaghi1]

The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.”

Haggai 2:9

This is the word of God for June 30, 2026..

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

You people just talk anyhow...

[Ifeoma Igbotic @IfeomaIgbotic]

I’m so disappointed in Chidimma. People supported you massively, and you went on to finish as the Miss Universe 1st runner-up,

You made your critics eat their words.

Only for you to go back to the same country you had escaped from. SMH!

[Chidi Nnanna @ZeSage]

If you drop money, e go happen 😁

[Okwesilieze @Okwesilieze82]

GADA should also be expanded with more labour force or rather MOW . Call top engineers run a 6 month construction bootcamp for like 7K people in road and city construction and thereafter enact the ABA PAVING ACT . Its time to pave our entire city , I mean EVERYWHERE @micho_xyz