Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Manager Gernot Rohr has begun to slowly build his team to represent Nigeria during the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Without the benefit of international friendlies, it appears that Rohr will rely on tactical preparation and not necessarily on a new crop of players to take Nigeria through to the World Cup. Only three of Rohr's current invitees arrive without ever playing for Nigeria's senior team (see Table 1).  With the NFF claiming financial difficulties, Rohr is also unable to engage in a long drawn camp for local players. Instead, he is relying mostly on accomplished internationals based outside the country. However, most of those players cut their teeth playing for either elite or youth clubs in Nigeria. Our focus in this article is to identify each player's last Nigerian club before heading overseas to play professionally. This exercise points to continued importance of home grown players in the process of unearthing talents for Nigeria's national team. The...

Striking options for Nigeria during the upcoming 2018 World Cup qualifying games will be at a premium. In recent times, Nigeria has found it increasingly difficult to distance itself, scoring-wise, from even its weakest opponent ( see Table 1 ). In its last 10 competitive games, Nigeria has scored three goals only once and that was two years ago! This has become, perhaps, Nigeria's most vexing issue. With a World Cup qualifying group of difficult teams, the scoring opportunities will become more scarce. Here, we discuss the options for Nigeria to rectify this problem. Tactical issues Though it is difficult to fully make a claim to tactical choices that Rohr is likely to apply, one may use the Tanzania game to attempt an educated guess. It is likely, that like under Manager Sunday Oliseh's tenure, the set piece will become important in Nigeria's creation of scoring opportunities. Thus, we will discuss the set piece as well as open play scoring options available to Nige...

If you are excited after watching Nigeria’s win over Tanzania by the slimmest of margins, I must say you have a good reason to be. Forget the slim margin. Deeply looking into the match itself, it is clear that the Nigerian team is headed for a good place with a bit of luck added. The win over Tanzania and the recent wins in the European friendlies against Mali and Luxemburg have introduced great expectations. The interest here, however, is in providing my view about the win over Tanzania. My view focuses on examining the team structure, the tactical issues, and then the individual athletes. Team Structure There have been insinuations that the team played in a 4-4-2 formation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The team played from a base 4-3-3 as we had assumed it might be under Gernot Rohr . However, 4-3-3 was just the base. At times, particularly defensively, it morphed into a 4-5-1 but there were difficulties with this as the likes of Victor Moses found it difficult to ...

Samson Siasia's recent announcement that he is quitting management of Nigerian football was a surprise to some people especially after he had incredibly taken an emotionally-beaten team to Nigeria's only medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Siasia is arguably Nigeria's most successful age-grade manager. In four national managerial stints, he has placed at the medal stage three times. That is a huge return for any coach. However, in none of those campaigns has he had it easy with the football federation. He had been frustrated every inch of the way and those frustrations have taken their toll. In spite of the whispers about his business dealings, there is no question that Siasia is a man who fights for the welfare of his players. It is his willingness and commitment to fight for his charges, in the face of administrative oppression, that has often put him in harm's way. However, he remained unbowed in several of those occasions and his charges have often played their he...

Nigeria's new manager, Gernot Rohr, now has 23 players to form his first squad as Nigeria readies for a competitive international against Tanzania in Uyo. Though the game is formally designated competitive, it will be used as a friendly but without the ability to use as many as 17 players as usually allowed in international friendlies. That regulatory limitation to substitutions certainly hampers Rohr's plans to get the team ready for the World Cup qualifier against Zambia in October and perhaps it also explains the choice of players that he has in the 23-person list. Of course, the list was likely drawn by his Nigerian assistant, Salisu Yusuf, who has better knowledge of the players but there is little doubt that Rohr set parameters to the invitation list. That squad list as well as a few other decisions give us an idea who Rohr is and how he, perhaps, plans his Nigerian tenure. There is speculation that he plans to recruit personal assistants that include an advisor, fit...

Today, Nigeria was eliminated by Germany from contending for the gold medal in men's Olympic football. However, the Nigerian team has come a long way during this Olympics. From a very late arrival to winning their group and then reaching the semi-final stage was far more than even Nigerians had expected from this team.  Playing against Germany, a team that was disciplined from start to finish, Nigeria had its chances but in the end it was the better team that deservedly moved on to the final. For me, the achilles heel was the inability to create an effective offside trap. It burned Nigeria badly in the opening game against Japan and the Swedes attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to exploit it in the next game. While we may have all forgotten, it was clear that the Germans did not. Early, they sought to exploit the weak areas in that trap. It paid off as the poor reaction time by the central defense created the winning goal after only eight minutes. From then on, it was a mountai...

Obi Mikel, Team Nigeria's skipper, was instrumental to Nigeria overcoming Denmark to move into the medal round of the 2016 Men Olympic Football. This victory was very important. Denmark has been Nigeria's boogie team at least in the minds of many Nigerians. Not many will forget their 4-1 pounding of the Super Eagles at the 1998 World Cup when reaching the quarter final stage had been assumed to be easy. Then just a few months ago, this Denmark Olympic team whipped Nigeria 6-2 after leading 6-0 until the last few minutes during an international tournament in Korea. Thus, today's game was approached with a good dose of trepidation by Nigerians. However, in spite of Nigeria's boycott of training because of delayed payment of allowances and in spite of the trepidation, Nigeria came through in a game that Nigeria probably could have won by a larger margin. At the center of that victory was clearly Mikel Obi who was the game's co-Man of the Match as far as one observed....