Karmic Wheel Catches Up With Eucharia Uche

Remember Eucharia Uche, the lesbophobic coach of the Nigerian Super Falcons Phobes who boasted about eliminating suspected lesbian players off her team?

The comments generated a firestorm of international criticism and earned Uche a June 29 chat with FIFA Director of Women's Competition's Tatjana Haenni to remind her about FIFA anti-discrimination policies.

After failing to get out of group play during last year's FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany her squad also failed to qualify for the 2012 London Games.

Nigeria has also been relentlessly attacking Equatorial Guinea ever since they upset them in 2008 and became a challenger to Nigerian dominance of African women's continental football.   They have been subjected to long and loud Nigerian transphobic gender griping and filed CAF and FIFA protests misgendering Equatorial Guinea players.  

It was an interesting 'things that make you go hmm' moment when Equatorial Guinea was ousted from the 2012 Olympic qualifying final due to a player eligibility issue and replaced by Cameroon.

Back in October Nigeria battled Cameroon to see who would join South Africa in representing the continent at this year's women's Olympic soccer tournament.

The Super Falcons won the first game of a two leg playoff in Abuja 2-1 but lost the return leg game on October 25 in Yaoundé by the same 2-1 score.  

The 3-3 aggregate score meant the London Olympic berth was decided by penalty kicks, and the Super Falcons subsequently lost the penalty kick shootout 4-3.  

That means for the first time since 2000 the Nigerian women's team will not be marching into an Olympic stadium and competing in the women's soccer tournament when the Games commence, which is unacceptable to Nigerian football fans. 

That failure combined with the Super Falcon failure to qualify for the 2011 All Africa Games tournament in Mozambique and their highly publicized failure at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup led to Uche's dismissal by the Nigeria Football Federation as the national team head coach.


No word yet from the Nigeria Football Federation on who will replace Uche.  The decision will be made by the end of the month and has a wide international list of candidates of both genders, but the Super Falcons and women footballers in that nation are justifiably lobbying for another female coach to replace her. 

But for the Super Falcons anybody will be better than the controversial lesbophobe and former international player who excelled more in generating negative press than stacking international football wins and major tournament appearances.

And yeah, karma is a rhymes with itch isn't it?