When Nigeria’s national football team competed at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, few thought it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with countries like Argentina and Brazil. But the team, lovingly nicknamed the Super Eagles, stunned the footballing world by winning gold in the world’s biggest sporting event.
“Super Eagles 96,” a new documentary by London-born filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, which recently premiered at the London Film Festival, showcases this brief, but important moment in Nigerian history. Though Bamiro was just 13 when the Atlanta Games took place, the team left a strong impression on him. “Those guys are superheroes,” Bamiro tells CNN. “As someone who loves football and someone whose parents are Nigerian, the Super Eagles were always around in our culture and household.”
Bamiro spent nearly two years making the film, shooting in the UK and Nigeria, and interviewing a mixture of experts and players including Jay-Jay Okocha, Taribo West and Celestine Babayaro.
The team was coached by Dutchman Jo Bonfrere, but it’s another Dutch coach who is widely credited for much of the team’s success. Clemens Westerhof, the “Dutchgerian,” coached the national football team between 1989 and 1994, laying the groundwork for the Olympic victory. He is central to the film, noted for his talent for scouting out players, but also his sheer determination. “I’m a bad loser, I want always to win,” says Westerhof in the film.
Before Westherhof’s tenure, Nigeria had a spotty record as a footballing nation. Though it had won the African Cup of Nations in 1980, it had never qualified for a World Cup. Under Westerhof, the country won the 1994 African Cup of Nations and competed in the 1994 World Cup, though it was knocked out by Italy before the quarterfinals.
Despite Nigeria’s previous mixed fortunes in the sport, it has always prided itself as being a footballing nation. Football is popular even in the poorest parts of the country and during the opening moments of the film, Bamiro depicts children playing the game on a marsh beneath an overpass.
“From a young age, all I dream(ed) about was football,” Super Eagles defender Taribo West says in the film, adding that he and his countrymen often lacked the opportunities that would be taken for granted in some of the sport’s most successful countries.