Belated Thoughts on Nigeria vs. Greece

The problems experienced in this World Cup can be traced back the problems that surfaced during the ANC. My concern (and I vocalized this) was that our progress was derailed by the ANC.

I said Amodu's mistake was not taking a page from the St. Etienne experience, where Nigeria successfully took down a bigger team. In the ANC we faced another big-team in Egypt, with a very conservative Makalele-ized squad (read 4-5 defensive midfielders) ... we lost comprehensively. The Egypt loss effectively killed Amodu's chances of coaching ... I warned him ... he did not listen. If he had studied all this and put together a preparation program, he would have been here ... but Amodu was Amodu and he was conservative to the end.

In looking back at the St. Etienne game where Nigeria defeated France. I notice that Nigeria played Olofinjana, Etuhu, Kanu and Kalu Uche ... this game revealed some strengths of Nigeria and some weaknesses of France.

The strength of Nigeria is in talismanic players like Ike Uche. His ability is seen below in the video below.



This particular effort highlights some key skills.

1. Stamina to chase down a ball.
2. Controlling the ball and beating your marker.
3. Out running your marker.
4. Shooting with force accurately.

It is in these areas that we really missed Ike Uche. Though Obasi is similar to Ike Uche ... he is (and no disrespect to him) not YET as good as Ike Uche. He cannot do what Uche did in the video above. Uche has done this same move against Real Madrid and other La-Liga teams ... Furthermore Uche has deep football intelligence and has scored against the best players. Argentina was very very very very very very HAPPY that they did not see Ike Uche anywhere on the field - They ALL know him - They ALL fear him ... what a pity for us.

So the ANC only introduced uncertainty and confusion. In came the back-slapping Presidential Task Force, and a few weeks after the ANC and after $2,000,000 changed hands in came Lars Lagerback with a 3 month contract in hand ... Amodu was now gone with 1,000,000 Naira and a Kia Jeep as a severance package.

In light of the ANC debacle I advised bringing on Siasia to partner Amodu. Which may have helped with some selection issues, but very likely we would have STILL seen this Kaita situation.

The progress we had made were with the Olympic games of 2008 and the St. Etienne game was a possible path to success. The U-17 and U-20 tournaments also produced some ingredients to fortify the team ... but Lars Lagerback had 3 months to study this and to quickly put together a preparation program.

I had reminded the Nigerians that Siasia, 2 years earlier had ALREADY conducted a tour of South Korea and Malaysia with the Olympic team. Comparing this to Lars Lagerback efforts, we witnessed Lagerback struggling to put together an effective camp, trying to delegate the arranging of friendlies to the NFF and muddling around hotel arrangements. Siasia having learned from past experiences usually set up his camping independently from the NFF (Faro, Malaysia, South Korea, Holland).

So after many hiccups Lagerback was able to get some meaningful games against Saudi Arabia, Columbia and North Korea ... all looked good and he firmed up his line up. When he got to South Africa, somehow the tires came off the car and the team did not seem so composed. The glaring issues have been individualism and indiscipline, coupled with a good dose of stage fright.

The discipline problem - Our problem has been discipline, we know this to be true. Largerback has mostly got a good 23-man squad ... where he is troubled is the lack of discipline.

Game 1: Ordiah makes square pass across the face of our goal. The ball is intercepted! No discipline.

Game 1: Goal comes off of an unmarked player from the turnover mentioned above. No discipline.

Game 1: Osaze not making the relevant through pass (see the same play in Argentina - Korea). No discipline.

Game 2: Sani Kaita bringing bush football antics into the World Cup. No discipline.

Yakubu's miss was understandable because the Argentinians and Greeks were getting that too from Enyeama ...

With respect to the discipline issues, we can also reflect back on the lack on on-field composure was also evidenced in the Tunisia game when they quicky equalized (the WC qualifier for clarification).

We do not have a creative midfielder right now, but that SHOULD NOT prevent us from playing good, tight football.

Bright spots in the Greece game were: Danny Shittu (To CE member Yaya, Shittu saved us too much in this game), Enyeama, Kalu Uche (good possession, sometimes too much). Whereas the Nigerian defense has been good ... the discipline issues are like malfunctioning parts on an imported 1970s Citroen ... a bit too hard to tie down.

Remember with BOTH Taiwo and Echiejile going down and after the sub of Osaze, we had used up ALL of our subs ... this game was cascading series of disasters caused by one stupid mistake ...

The best thing we can do is to field our strongest players against Korea. This will mean starting Obafemi Martins, Osaze and Kalu Uche. This will also mean playing Utaka in place of the errant Kaita ... the best we can hope for is something like a 4 goal rout of Korea ... I have faith in this sort of line up ... to actually think that Kaita has been decamping Utaka all this time is actually hard to imagine. Despite Utaka's poor season, we should reflect on the seasons of Podolski and Klose and remember who John Utaka actually is!

The good news is that Argentina WILL have some incentive to DEFEAT Greece because Messi is yet to score and Milito and Aguero have not yet scored. I do not think Messi will want Higuain to run away with the scoring title.

For Sani Kaita, his red card could be a 2, 3 or 4 game ban depending on what FIFA says (if Nigeria had made it further). However his Eagles career at risk, which is a shame ... this incident is worse that the Kingston Lariya incident and he has already made international headlines. His redemption will have to come at the club level ... redeeming himself will be very very hard.

Siddon look mode has been activated.





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