This World Cup is surprising. It keeps doling out more twists and turns. Germany is out of the World Cup. If anyone told me this would happen, I would have surely disputed it. I picked Germany and Mexico to go through and now I only have Mexico going through.
They didn’t only exit the competition, they took the last spot in the group, after being humiliated by South Korea with two goals in quick succession in the added minutes. Most of the favourites are getting dumped and you could see what it took Argentina before they could advance. Like I always say, you can get life’s lessons from football sometimes.
I read my friend’s post yesterday; 
That is life. We need to be a source of inspiration to each other. No man is an island of knowledge. No man has the monopoly of knowledge. We all need one another. No man can make it out here all alone. I learn from you, you learn from me and whatever we learn from each other can never be taken away from us. We live and learn and we learn to know more and improve.
I picked most of my favourite teams to advance from the group, based on past achievements. I only picked Nigeria out of loyalty. I would have picked Argentina and Croatia to advance but then, past achievements count for little again, because we can see how Argentina struggled and it took a late drama for them to advance. Everyone is evolving. Life is evolving. We should too.
When we reach certain heights, we should not plateau there. We should always seek for greater depths and heights. We should never be too comfortable. I spoke about Nigeria yesterday with Micky. They call us the giants of Africa and the truth is, if we can be humble enough to admit it, we would know that others are leaving us behind. People are only viewing us with yesterday’s lens. It's blurry, they need to clean it. Being realistic is the first step to self realization.
Today’s achievement is tomorrow’s mediocrity and this is why we need to always aim to be better than we were yesterday.
Everyone keeps evolving and doing things better and we should never be stuck with past ways of doing things, we should always evolve. This is why Mourinho’s defensive tactic when he was Chelsea Football Club’s coach back then is now being frowned at by Manchester United’s supporters because most people have found a way to break down that resilient defense and also because most players are now evolving too.
Everyone wants to play with flair, even the players. This is why you will see a player refusing to come on because the coach wants to use him to block and he knows his team needs to attack when they are trailing.
We should learn to leave behind what we have achieved before. We should let it motivate us to do things better and this is why the traits of Ronaldo and Messi are admirable. They are motivated by what they have achieved before and seek to do things greater and better.
Past achievements don’t matter to these living legends and that is why they are always a step above the others. Don't let people clap for you too soon, and I don't need to remind us of Balotelli, Chamakh, Adriano, and other footballers.
Djokovic; the tennis player came and hit the ground running. Imagine if Rafael Nadal didn’t evolve and intensify more efforts, he would have been a yesterday’s man.
Germany’s exit from the World Cup taught me a valuable lesson as
Thank you for your time.
My pen doesn’t bleed, it speaks, with speed and ease.
Still me,
My tongue is like the pen of a ready writer.
Olawalium; (Love’s chemical content, in human form). Take a dose today: doctor’s order.