By Jacob Ajom
The Super Eagles are away to Russia for a friendly match against their hosts on October 6. Before their departure to Moscow, they received the biggest shock from an African team under coach Eric Chelle. The Super Eagles lost 3-0 to lowly rated Guinea Bissau in a 2027 AFCON Qualifier.
Former Nigeria international and one time assistant coach of the Super Eagles, Sylvanus Okpala said the Super Eagles display against Guinea-Bissau was the worst he had witnessed in a long while.
In a chat with Sports Vanguard, Okpala said, “if they were tactical, at least, one would have seen a rugged defense line and some movement or signs of match plan and, perhaps, if passes were being disrupted or impeded, one would attribute that to the bad pitch. There was no bite, no defence, no strategy, nothing. I don’t think they had a match plan.”
Was it a technical problem? We asked Okpala
Well, I wasn’t there to know if they did not listen to the coach’s instructions, but from what one saw, one could say the blame was partly the players’ and partly technical. These are big professional players and as professionals, there are certain decisions you make on the pitch that don’t have to come from the coach because you play to the coach’s instructions and you add your own.
I think we have not been thinking ahead, I have been granting interviews and if you remember what I have been talking about in the last three to four years is beginning to manifest now. I said all this before now; not that I am a seer or the man who saw tomorrow. I was only making commonsense from my experience and knowledge of the game. We have not been proactive in our thinking.
I have always insisted that it is only Nigerian coaches that can solve this problem of the national team. I still stand by it. If we were thinking ahead of time, this problems associated with the national team would have been addressed by now. I don’t want to go into details now. The coaches were supposed to be thinking ahead. It could get worse. I didn’t know it would come so soon.
I said it that a time would come that we may not be able to qualify for the Nations Cup talk less of the World Cup. 32 or so number countries qualify for the Nations Cup. If you cannot qualify for that how can you qualify for the World Cup that has 9 slots. But we still have the opportunity to salvage the situation. It was a very bad result.
Only one team will qualify from Group L, which has Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar and Tanzania
It is not over yet. When it comes to qualifiers, like this, you don’t look for good football or entertaining football. If you can play exciting football fine, but the major target is to play and qualify. You come, after one or two days training you play a match, so there is no time for training. All you try to do within the short time you have is to plan your strategy, to make sure you don’t lose your matches at worst get away draw. You need to adopt what will be suitable to your players to optimize their performance. It’s not only about being a good coach, but you are also a manager of men. In Nigeria when you talk people appear to be sentimental. I am not a soothsayer. I only talk from my personal experience as a player, a coach and my knowledge of the game. We have Nigerians here who can do this job. We can do it. We did it with Keshi. Who were the players then. We only had Mikel Obi as our biggest player with Chelsea, while most others were either in second or third divisions in European leagues but we were able to manage them. I think we need to go back.
The present failure has nothing to do with the NFF because the management was in place the coach was there, he knew the time of the game and planned for it. The logistics were in place.
Team selection, confusion arising from too many players and selection crisis?
Football has gone beyond having the best 11. Portugal has some of the best players on the planet but they didn’t go past the quarter finals of the World Cup, France one of the best teams in the world but they failed to win it at the last World Cup. Then look at Spain, how many big names do they have apart from Rodri and one 19-year old boy(Yamal)? But they won the World Cup. Look at France and the stars they are parading.
You don’t come and say you want to play like Brazil, or you want to play like Argentina. No. Every country has its own style of play. England, for instance, don’t play like Spain. They play their own way. But there are certain things you can copy that suit your own way of play, not everything. So every country has its own style of play. You don’t import a style of play that don’t suit our football philosophy. That is the problem.
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