Iceland are a cute story and all, but I’m so happy Nigeria crushed them

After the six minutes of extra time were up and Nigeria beat Iceland 2-0, my father, who was in front of me clenching his fists and partially blocking my view of the TV, turned around.

“Yes! At least we can say that we showed up,” he said to me in Igbo. “No matter what happens, we showed up.”

When the game started, my father could only watch it for the first two minutes.

“I can’t watch it,” he said, and then shook his head. “My heart can’t take it.”

Then he went to his room, closed the door so he couldn’t hear the game, and laid in bed.

That’s his usual behavior when Nigeria is playing. It’s such a ridiculous show of a man in turmoil. He tries to watch it, and by the first mistake his anxiety has turned him into a mess.

But then he can’t stop himself from being interested in the game. When I yelled after Iceland missed a chance from a free kick, my father ran out of his room, asking if someone had scored. When I told him that it was a missed chance, he shook his head, said that Nigeria were embarrassing themselves and went back to lay down.

I alerted him after Nigeria were up 2-0 and he spent the rest of the game worrying, as if he was finding out election results. When he saw the replay for Ahmed Musa’s second goal, he whispered something that translates to, “my son.” And when he saw Tyronne Ebuehi give away the penalty towards the end of the game, he tried to leave the house but stood by the door to watch the resultant penalty.

Nigeria needed to beat Iceland, because Nigeria’s first showing against Croatia was truly embarrassing. It was anti-climatic considering the hype around Nigeria before the World Cup (which was mainly due to the release of the jerseys, but still).

Nigeria were the first African team to qualify for the tournament, and even though they struggled to win matches before the tournament, they were a strong and organized team going in. Then Croatia bullied them. It’s one thing to lose while giving it your best, but Nigeria were unrecognizable in their first game.

They needed to prove to themselves, to their fans and everyone who had backed them coming into the tournament, that they were better than that first performance.

And as a petty person, I wanted Nigeria to crush Iceland for very cynical reasons.

Yes, as a Nigerian, I wanted our team to win. They’re a point of national pride. Supporting the national team has always been a part of being Nigerian for me, and their successes and failures affect me tremendously. They shouldn’t, but here we are.

It also makes me happy to see other Nigerians happy, and their victories are moments for everyone to come together in celebration.

But also, whatever, I was sick of Iceland. I was sick of their terrible style of play. I didn’t watch years of Tony Pulis’ Stoke City and Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan to have to deal with that style of soccer in the biggest stage. I understand that Iceland — being the smallest nation to play in the tournament, something announcers will always remind you, and having players who weren’t full-time professionals, another thing that announcers will never stop reminding the world of — need to play in a conservative way to have any success.

But goodness, it’s boring to watch. It’s not even good defensive soccer, like Inter Milan. Iceland has no plans when they get the ball. They just hope for the best.

Iceland absolutely deserves to be in the World Cup and their style works, but it was so fun watching them scramble to think of something to do after the first goal. When they realized that they couldn’t just sit back and had to attack, they were lost. It was like watching Batman struggle to fight after Bane laughed at his smoke bombs in The Dark Knight Rises.

And just as it was satisfying to see Batman, who people swear could beat any villain or hero with some preparation, get his back broken and tossed away by Bane, it was fun seeing the Icelandic players fall over themselves trying to tackle Musa before his second goal. It was their spirit that broke first.

Ordinarily, I’m on the side of the underdogs. They represent the spirit of the every man, the soul of the revolution. The underdog is all of us fighting against the greater system with limited resources and our ingenuity. But damn, I was sick of hearing about their spirit and fight, their clap and how wonderful their story was, while they played a reductive style of soccer, and as other teams — like Peru, Morocco, Senegal, Iran, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and Japan — took the game to bigger opponents and weren’t praised in the same way.

Iceland are the pragmatic idea of doing whatever it takes to gain a result, but the other teams stood as testaments to aesthetics. Soccer doesn’t have to be reduced to purely cynical terms. It can still be fun. There’s space for noble losers and success that doesn’t come with reducing the game entirely to defend and hope.

You can have intelligent defending and organization without being so one-dimensional. Nigeria are evidence of that. Nigeria are built on solid defending and a ball-winning midfield, but they’re also good at counter-attacking. They can still pass and move the ball. I like teams that at least attempt to play the game.

It’s petty, but I’m willing to accept this dark side of myself. Sometimes — probably just Iceland — I like to see the underdog crushed.

When the game ended, my father was relieved to have survived another episode of watching Nigeria. He was happy, and I was happy too. Everything I wanted to happen, happened. Nigeria won, they won by playing well, and they crushed the team that I had been secretly — not even a bit — waiting to be exposed. All is right in the world. Until the next game.