Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Each month, I offer my view of the 23 players that Nigeria is likely to select for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. As you can imagine, this is likely to change from month to month based on player form, injuries, and other considerations.  This piece is the first of the Countdown to Russia . Player chances will be categorized as Highly Probable++ (80-100% likelihood), Possible+ (50-79%), Questionable?  (40-59%) and Doubtful?? (39% or less). Comments will follow each category. Highly Probable++ Victor Moses Mikel Obi Kelechi Iheanacho Shehu Abdullahi William Ekong Wilfred Ndidi Presently, the above six players are highly probable of being at the World Cup in Russia. You may wonder why Kelechi Iheanacho is highly probable when several current starters are not in this category. However, this listing is about selecting the 23 squad players and not just the first 11 players. In spite of opportunities to invite new players to the squad, Iheanacho is a solid sho...

This is another story line providing insight to the often muted records of the Nigerian national team. Recently, Nigeria finished two critical games at the African Nations Championship (CHAN) with a man less than the opponent due to disqualifications. Thus, these insights are designed to make accessible the unvoiced, ignored, and often erased records that affect Nigeria's games. This disciplinary record of the Nigerian national team and its players is gleaned from match records. We focus attention on assessed cautions and disqualifications from international games since 1949. Of course, as you may have guessed, this is drawn from a huge number of games played by the national team and, thus, assessed record of cautions and disqualifications are plentiful.  To simplify matters, I focus solely on the top incidents as defined by the volume of incidents per game in case of the team and volume per career in case of individual players. Further, cautions are separated from disqualific...