Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

The score line of 3-1 over Luxembourg meant little in the larger scheme of things but you felt that Nigeria could have gone home with a much larger victory over this Luxembourg team. The domination was total except for the first few minutes when Nigeria appeared disjointed and disorganized. In the end, not much can be taken from this game except a few things that I point to below. 1.      Omeruo’s mistakes are getting a bit too troubling. This is not the first and you hope it is the last one. His unforced error let Luxembourg into the game when they hardly merited it. 2.      Kelechi Iheanacho had a coming out party tonight. It was by far his best game and now he definitely must be the starting striker. The way he moved about, his confidence, his ability to be at the right place and at the right time is simply mindboggling. I state it now, Nigeria has not had a sharp forward like this since Thompson Usiyan. Forget Obafemi Martins, Ike Uch...

Today, we have searched through the database to bring you statistics comparing members of a footballing family. The topic is about comparing brothers who have played for the Nigerian national team and comparing fathers and sons who also have played for the Nigerian national team. Brother Statistics The brother data shows 18 such relationships since the start of the Nigerian national team in 1949. The most celebrated ones are the Okalas (Emmanuel and Patrick), Uches (Kalu and Ikechukwu), and Eguavoens (Monday and Augustine). The only two brothers to debut in the same game are the Atuegbu brothers when Andrew and Aloysius debuted against Ivory Coast on July 14 of 1974. Andrew ended up playing far less games because he chose to leave club soccer in Nigeria to study abroad in the United States. The entire Atuegbu playing clan of brothers also included Mathew and Nicholas, who did not make it to the national team level. Examining the data shows that often one brother may not be as ...

Increasingly, many Nigerian players leave the country from youth teams or academies to clubs in Europe where they are eased into the regular club via the club's youth team. Of course, this is less of a risk for European clubs and, thus, easier access to Europe for Nigerian players.  However, for players at the top tier of the Nigerian league, the path to Europe is more difficult for several reasons. First, they often must try out for a place in the main squad of the foreign team and their success depends on a variety of factors including performance, health, quality of remuneration, and availability of squad space. Thus, increasingly Nigerian league players are choosing the alternative route of North African and South African clubs as gateways to Europe. Ultimately, then, it is not surprising that many Nigerian youth level players put off joining the top tier of the local league and instead seek access to developmental squads of foreign clubs. A recent example of this is M...

The last two years have seen the scoring averages per game for Nigeria's national team plummet to the lowest points in the last 10 years. Those are shocking statistics, considering that the team just achieved its top scoring averages within a three year period (2011-2013). While we do not attempt to guess at what may have led to this poor state of affairs, we post the statistics in the figure below for your view. Note that the sharp rise of player scoring statistics in 2006 and 2016 are aberrant as the players who are responsible for those two high points played less than 5 games in each of those years. Nevertheless, it is important to look at the scoring average for the team's top scorer in each of the last ten years. As noted earlier, some of those averages are aberrant considering that the top scorer in  years 2006, 2009, and 2016 participated in less than five games each. In essence, the top sc...