Football Nigeria -- Eagles Etcetera

Nigeria reached the 2014 World Cup finals with a routine-like win over Ethiopia in Calabar. The game provided us with an opportunity to closely look at the Nigerian team. Unfortnately, this game may not have been Nigeria at its best considering the circumstance where it started with a foot already in the World Cup finals after wining last month in Addis Ababa 2-1. Nevertheless, here is my interpretation of the game in Calabar. THE GAME: Nigeria controlled most of the game with its ball possession display and some revealing passes that presented several opportunities early on. However, it must be said that the fact that Nigeria was hardly troubled may have been due to Ethiopia’s tactics where only Saladin was left up front until the opening goal when Mekele was further advanced in search of goals. With Saladin alone up top, Ethiopia sought to cut off Nigeria’s wide defenders rampaging upfront with long balls. However, with Nigeria’s central defense at home, Saladin...

Nigeria has faced a fair share of age cheating allegations during FIFA Youth tournaments, at least until the era of MRI tests for U-17 players. FIFA introduced the MRI test in 2009 and claims that it is 99% accurate in identifying players who should be eligible at the U-17 level. What we do here is to test if the date of birth (DOB) reported by Nigeria's U-17 squads show a difference between the pre-MRI era and the post-MRI era. We are able to locate squad lists at FIFA tournaments or at the African Youth tournament in order to compare. What do we seek to find? Possibly, that cheating players in Nigeria (during pre-MRI era) report DOBs closer to FIFA cutoff date (i.e. First quarter of the year) in attempt to explain physical development that is more advanced than their teammates. This would be an anomaly since players of all ages in Africa undergo similar development with very little effect of age at the unorganized stages which may last till most players are close to 17. Thus,...

Nigeria’s 2-1 win over Ethiopia in Addis Ababa  provides Nigeria an advantaged position on the road to Brazil 2014. However, it took several twists and turns to create a riveting story all on its own. In the end, the 2-1 win was barely deserved but it demonstrated the spirit of an African champion. Below, I provide my review of the game. Background :  The game was on a soggy field and late afternoon heat in a high altitude environment that created difficult conditions particularly for Nigeria. But even Ethiopians took a water break after just 30 minutes. Difficult circumstances, indeed. The Game and Tactical Issues : Nigeria attempted to slow the pace of the game early mindful of the altitude and the heat. On the other hand, Ethiopia pressured the ball with the sole purpose of disallowing Nigeria any space with the ball and also upping the tempo of the game mindful of their advantage under the climatic conditions. Of course, the focus of this tactic wa...

Addis Ababa -- There are far more thorns on the road to the World Cup in Brazil than many Nigerians may think. On paper, Nigeria should overcome Ethiopia. After all, Nigeria has higher profile players,  better talents, and pedigree. However, let the truth be told -- the game in Addis Ababa on October 13 will be more challenging than most Nigerians expect.  We believe each factor below will help decide the game as no one factor ever decides a soccer game. Here we go: 1. The Altitude -- There has been much written on the importance of altitude in international games and this is a real advantage for the Ethiopians (2400 meters above sea level). Ordinarily, teams counter an altitude disadvantage by arriving early but this is impossible as Nigerian players are mostly playing overseas and will not be assembled to make it to Addis Ababa in time to overcome the altitude. Thus, Nigeria will employ the alternative strategy of arriving just a  day before the game and leaving rig...

When Emmanuel Emenike scored Nigeria’s fourth goal against Burkina Faso last week Tuesday in an international friendly he signaled his approach towards matching a Nigerian record  currently held by Yakubu Mambo. If Emenike scores in his next game for Nigeria he would have scored in five consecutive games matching Mambo’s feat.  Surprisingly, none of Nigeria’s celebrated goal scorers ever scored in five consecutive games. The most celebrated of them all – Rashidi Yekini – had three streaks of scoring in three consecutive games. Consecutive Games Scoring                                                 Games           Total Goals           Period Yakubu MAMBO                      5                  ...

Here we take a look at leadership of the Nigerian national team in the hope of discovering a few things. We selected just a few of the captains from Christian Chukwu to Vincent Enyeama. It is important to note that we did not select every captain in between those periods. For instance, we did not include Uche Okechukwu or Augustine Okocha in our sample. We compared only six captains - Chukwu, Keshi, Oliseh, Kanu, Yobo, and Enyeama - on certain datasets along two major classifications of 'all games' and 'competitive games.' We looked at number of games played, percentage of those games captained, percentage started, efficiency in games captained, and minutes played. Efficiency is calculated by noting percentage of all possible points obtained in the game captained. Each of those factors were compared in the two categories of 'all games' and 'competitive games.' One of the surprises we found is that Chukwu started all games that he had played for Niger...

Most Nigerian national team coaches begin their tenure by speaking on the need to rebuild the national team and they speak glowingly about the abundance of Nigerian talent. One way of rebuilding a team is debuting new talent and determining those good enough to be part of strong team going forward. However, while it appears clear that there are several talented Nigerian players available for selection into the national team, some coaches often rely on established players. Our report here is not on  reliance on established players but on discovery of new talent. Thus, what we do in this report is to compare eight  coaches –Shuaibu Amodu,  Johaness Bonfrere, Christian Chukwu, Augustine Eguavoen, Stephen Keshi, Adegboye Onigbinde, Berti Vogts, and Clemens Westerhoff – on how each has debuted new internationals during their tenure as national team coach.  We have selected the eight coaches deliberately, for this report, based on presiding over a significant number of ...