Football is a beautiful game for the fans when their teams spackled in the pitch throughout 90mins and also get the expected result, anything else is "urgly football". But the inside show behind the scene is obscure to many lovers of football. How was the beautiful football produced? Who cares, the lads and the boss knows all we know is criticise when things aren't done the way we expected, thats a football fan for you.

That said, Nigeria traveled to Egypt with a young inexperienced team and a weak aging skipper in Mikel.

They weren't listed among the favourites to lift the trophy in Salah's nation.

Unlike host Egypt, Algeria, Senigal etc Nigeria are without the big names in the big clubs.

But what confidence do we have in this team? The first match though speak in volume.

Rohr's starting IV was criticised as for the lack of Ighalo and Musa. A fair share of the criticism was the man in the post, Epkeyi.
But Nigeria conceeded no goal, frequently won possession and made excellent moves in the final third. Unfortunately for Paul Onuachu, his 12mins header lack the strength to beat the informed Burundi goalie.
In the end Ighalo came off the bench to hit the net in the 77th mininute, just 4mins after his introduction. Was that the game plan? Whatever, the goodnews is that Nigeria had the lion share of possession and still win the game.

Whats promising about that match?
1. Nigeria weak side was better than Burundi's best side.
2. Rohr's team and game plan was tactically organised.
3. Mikel 2nd half sub tell us the the manager relied in his experience but not his strenght/performance.
4. The manager have a good understanding of his opponent.
5. Starting a compitition with a weak team against a weak side is a sign of big dream.

Whichever way the coach decide to approach every group games we are confident that Nigeria must qualify from the group and the best of the team is reserved for the knockout stages.

For me, Nigeria have what it takes to finish in top 3 of the competition, hard to say win it, but it's possible depending on the opponents they are drawn with in the early knockout stages.

Well

Let's see where that will take the team