The performance of the senior national team of Nigeria in recent games under new manger Jose Peseiro has been far from convincing despite the fact that the team is still on course to qualify for the next Africa Cup of Nations.
Peseiro’s team lost 0-1 to Guinea Bissau before bouncing back to beat the same team at their backyard. However the performance in both games left a lot to be desire especially as they didn’t score as many goals as expected.
Coming into the game, the fear for Guinea Bissau was clearly on how they will contain the rampaging forwards of the senior national team of Nigeria, who have been scoring goals for fun at their respective teams in Europe.
However, they managed to score just once in the two games against Guinea Bissau, who didn’t even have to defend that much as the Super Eagles didn’t carry enough threat to make them defend with fear. As a matter of fact, Nigeria’s only goal came from the spot.
Reacting to the team’s not to impressive performance, one of the players in the team explained that the team will continue to struggle untill the manager gets palyers who will play in certain ways that fits the style he wants to play.
” Our new coach is an apostle of attacking, free flowing football but to play that we need a ball playing goalkeeper, we don’t have one now. More importantly we need a player who is at home playing as a lone defensive midfielder. The ones we have now are all comfortable in a double pivot. It is why Wilfred Ndidi is struggling” he explained.
” I agree it’s the modern way most teams play when they want to go on the offensive but we can’t play that way for now. It’s the concept of playing a double 8. Attacking full backs and centre backs pushing high up the pitch. We don’t have players to play that way at least for now, so we will continue to struggle. I pray he realizes on time”, he stated.
Mohammed Mowiz
