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Pressure is reportedly on Peseiro from NFF to include Nwakali, Ekong, Musa, and Balogun in AFCON squad.

BREAKING!!!

Minister of Sports, @OwanEnoh has invited Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro to a meeting.

The meeting will discuss the Super Eagles' poor performance and plans for next year's AFCON.


Source : Adepoju Tobi Samuel.

Cecco90:
To Sack Jose Peseiro, Or Not! –Odegbami

Meanwhile, the present Super Eagles are not strong in two major areas of the field – the midfield and goalkeeping.

There is little that can be done about the team’s strength without the influence of a few players with exceptional skills and abilities in certain areas of the team. Presently, there is a dearth of creative and attacking midfield players who can hold and distribute the balls well.

Goalkeeping has become a problem only because Peseiro refuses to see the difference between an efficient goalkeeper and one whose only qualification is his physical frame.

The last goal against Zimbabwe, scored directly from a free kick 30 metres from his goal clearly exposed Uzoho’s weakness. It is an elementary goalkeeping error.


Source : completesport

The last goal against Zimbabwe, scored directly from a free kick 30 metres from his goal clearly exposed Uzoho’s weakness. It is an elementary goalkeeping error.

Odegbami on the beat.

To Sack Jose Peseiro, Or Not! –Odegbami

A friend, a foremost sports journalist, called me up last week from Abuja to inform me that he was racing to the office of the Minister of Sports to inform him of his decision to lead a national campaign to sack Jose Peseiro, the Portuguese coach of the Super Eagles. He wanted my urgent opinion.

Of course, I do not take decisions in a hurry, nor in a panic mode. I also do not swim with the tide of opinion based on emotional or sentimental outbursts, or be part of a mob action baying for the blood of a foreign or local coach, when everything around is skewed against any form of success.

I politely told him I had no opinion yet on the matter and would make it public when I do. That’s what I am doing now.

I have traversed a similar path in the past and got burnt by the power of narrower interests and personalities that have run and ruined Nigerian football for many years.

The core of the matter is that the Super Eagles are not winning their matches. Even easy ones. As far as the people are concerned, these last two drawn matches are ‘failures’ and someone must pay for them.

That person is Jose Peseiro.I won’t completely fall for such sentiments now.

The Super Eagles should win AFCON 2023. They should also qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Let’s look at some of the issues that can truncate these goals.

There is no depth to the country’s domestic football. They were neglected for too long by successive football federation boards. The boards concentrated on the more personally ‘lucrative’ Super Eagles. They feasted on the fruits without properly feeding the roots. The tree eventually and inevitably weakened and withered, having been deprived of nutrients essential for the development of players for a career in the domestic leagues – good nurseries, organisation, integrity, infrastructure, capacity-building programs, adequate funding, great welfare packages, and so on. The only available ingredient has been the endless sea of young uncut diamonds in Nigerian players. Ironically, these players are doing everything to flee the country for greener pastures and better opportunities in other parts of the world, and not to strengthen the domestic leagues.

This uncontrolled migration has made nonsense of any attempt to build a serious national team of local players. The failure of the big clubs in the country to win any continental laurels confirms this. That is why all the recent foreign coaches employed don’t take the route of the domestic leagues to seek players for the national teams. The calibre of players is just not there.

So, Peseiro, like the others before him, concentrates on observing Nigerian players in the various leagues in Europe. He assembles the best of them that he finds to form the country’s Super Eagles. He also only has two days before most matches to work with the players before matches, making it impossible to build a team with any level of organised play, pattern and understanding. You do not build solid teams that way. They must have some time to train together, understand each other, be infused with a planned style and philosophy, and be made to play several matches. That’s the only way a good team can emerge.

Under the present circumstances, the Super Eagles do not have such luxury. Coaches have been on this impossible mission for well over a decade.

AFCON and the World Cup are the only championships that provide a little time for the team to train together, play some friendlies, and become a unit. The team uses the earlier group matches of the championship to get better.

That’s what happened during the transition between Gernot Rohr and Austin Eguavoen. A good team started to evolve during the group matches of AFCON 2021, only for the process to be disrupted by a difficult match and a costly error that saw the Eagles exit rather uncharacteristically ‘prematurely’. The baby and the bath water were thereafter thrown into the gully of history. The result is to begin again.

Jose-peseiro-super-eagles-dr-segun-odegbami-afcon-2023-2026-fifa-world-cup

That’s how Jose Peseiro came in to inherit an impossible and unchangeable situation. For as long as the present system is not changed, no coach in the world can change the fortunes of the Super Eagles. The best he can do is what Gernot Rohr and, now, Jose Peseiro have been doing – not wasting time on the local players from the domestic league (they are not good enough for the national team without additional exposure and training in Europe), scanning Europe for players of Nigerian descent, assembling the best of them for the short periods before matches that can NEVER make them a good team with organizational depth, and then going on their knees to pray for undeserved victories. They win some and lose most!

So, Nigerians are disappointed and angry, and bay for the blood of successive coaches.

Yet, deep down, the issues have roots in other issues.
A proper study by proper experts is necessary.

Arm-chair critics masquerading as experts whose noise-making rises above the din of common sense and more careful interrogations blur proper and more meaningful conversations.

Meanwhile, the present Super Eagles are not strong in two major areas of the field – the midfield and goalkeeping.

There is little that can be done about the team’s strength without the influence of a few players with exceptional skills and abilities in certain areas of the team. Presently, there is a dearth of creative and attacking midfield players who can hold and distribute the balls well.

Goalkeeping has become a problem only because Peseiro refuses to see the difference between an efficient goalkeeper and one whose only qualification is his physical frame.

The last goal against Zimbabwe, scored directly from a free kick 30 metres from his goal clearly exposed Uzoho’s weakness. It is an elementary goalkeeping error.

Finally, Nigeria should not panic and make decisions that will not impact anything, will not change the Super Eagles and will not provide guaranteed outcomes.

This is the time to be cool, calm and calculated.

Nigeria is blessed with a lot of good players presently. With a little bit of luck, more patience and the time shortly before AFCON 2023 used properly to build a stronger team, plus the return of one of the deadliest strikers on the planet, Victor Osimhen, in the team, Nigeria shall improve steadily into AFCON 2023.

In January, the team will use the group matches of the championship to get better, and possibly go on to win AFCON 2023. They will then gain the essential confidence to play more consistently and (at the end of AFCON) establish a stronger team that shall be able to go into the World Cup qualifying matches with more strength and purpose and qualify for the World Cup as true champions of African football.

Source : completesport

Odunayaw:
That free kick could have beaten anyone. Thank you.

From that distance?
Anyone like who?

Napoleon55:
Osimhen is just unlucky to be among this present crop of players,
I wish he had come earlier.

How is he going to win trophies with the super eagles,or even break Rashidi's record?

Abeg rest.
Wetin you want make Haaland do?

https://afr.score808v2.com/football/2498644-zimbabwe-vs-nigeria.html

Try this

It's reported that the security of the Uyo Stadium delayed Amas Obasogie at the gate because they didn't recognize him. So embarrassing.

🚨BOMBSHELL!!!! 🤯🤯🤯

Enyimba’s head coach, Finidi George Fires At Management For AFL Exit

“Out of 19 new players that were brought in, I had knowledge of only 4 of them. When I saw the quality of the players that were brought, I called Ekwueme the Sporting Director and asked what the target for the season is, he said it is just to stabilize in the league as the focus is to settle down first”

“Ideally, before registering players for any competition, the coaches must be consulted to submit the list. But that wasn’t the case here. For whatever flimsy reason, we were not consulted and they did the registration themselves. As a result, some of the players we would have needed were not registered. It was much later that the sporting director just sent us the list of players that they had already registered.

“After the first leg, they dropped some players from travelling for the second leg in Casablanca, claiming that they couldn’t get them visas. We had to protest it strongly before it was rectified. We later found out that there was more to it.

“Can you imagine that we went for such a game without the goalkeeping and fitness coaches? Myself and Yema were the only coaches that travelled for that game. That is very strange to me.

“Everyone has to put the interest of the club first because until this is done, we would only be joking.”

“We arrived Uyo on October 17 with the idea to have as many training sessions as possible on the grass pitch in Uyo since we are more used to our synthetic pitch. But we couldn’t really achieve that because the management failed to make the right arrangements with the stadium authorities. As a result, we improvised and had one of our training sessions at a primary school, while another training session was cut short because of the same poor arrangements.

“In fact, we played a team that was more used to the playing surface than us, the home team. It was obvious that we were at a disadvantage as a team used to artificial pitches and this really affected us.

“Also, we had only three trainings with the AFL match ball, meanwhile, our opponents had enough time to get used to it. That was why you could see my players struggling with their control, passing and shooting.”

“It is sad to see such statements being released when all hands should be on deck and things should be more organized to enable a positive environment for all. Yes, there have been issues, but I remained patient because I believed that we could harmonise efforts and work things out; but here we are.

“The issue with the team is obvious, and it has nothing to do with the coaches. The same coaches won the league with less goals conceded and highest goal scored. We won the best Super 6 ever organized, scored the highest and conceded the least number of goals,”

Finidi George told selected journalists in an exclusive interview.

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mostob:





wetin we no go see on this thread.




Una don hear? Na to dey greet people first before quoting them. And make una try dey add Uncle and Bros o

The question is, must you quote them?
There are some people I will never quote no matter how interested I am in their comment.
Anyone full of abuses, insults and curses on top ordinary football is a no no for me.

minfelix:
2010 Afcon we conceded 2goals against them…make we rest abeg

Not true.
We beat them 3-0
Osaze got a brace.

Them don cancel Mozambique red card?
I no dey understand again o.

AndSunGorilla:
Uzoho has had good games for us too, for exa.ple he had an almost faultless WC and he was excellent in the friendly against Brazil before he got injured. Major thing is he needs to find a new club where he will playing and not be on the bench. Staying in Cyprus ad #2 doesn't speak well for him. E beta make he find any club that would of course feed him and at least give him the chance to play week in week out.

Let's not forget that it was something that sent him to the bench in the first place.

Bannedlargedx2:
You must be mad. Iwobi that you guys keep disrespecting us one of our best midfielders of all time. You guys claim that, the midfield is atrocious yet game after game, numerous chances are created and aren’t converted by the strikers

On top football naim you dey abuse me ? Abeg, if you are not emotionally balanced to engage in an intellectual debate, just read (that's if you must) and pass my assertions.

charlesemeka85:
and na this same midfield jpes will deploy only iwobi and ndidi against? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Mk una comot hope for this afcon cus the heart break will be severe

Before nko?
Thank Peseiro contract is tied to AFCON performance. I doubt that guy go survive past Quarterfinals.

Bannedlargedx2:
my guy, it’s not about how many goals you scored but the importance and quality of goals that you scored. For example, I ranked emenike ahead of so many Nigerian strikers simply because he WON and scored many important goals. In the short time that aghawowa played, the guy scored few but important goals especially in 2000/2002 ANC

Few but important goals to get bronze medal abi?.
Emenike would have done nothing with this midfield duo of Ndidi and Iwobi.
Give Iheanacho, Awoniyi and the rest a midfield trio of Mikel Obi, a prime Onazi and Mba and watch them score many important goals too.
My point is many of those former players with the exception of just few would have also struggled in this age of modern football and our present set up (with Jose Peseiro ).
Are the past generations actually better than the present ones? This is very debatable in my opinion.

As great as Aghahowa was in SE colours, Iheanacho has equalled his goal scoring record with the national team.
I might be wrong but sometimes I feel we overate this past SE players.
With all the so called exploits in the 1900s, what did they really achieve?

Wail all you want, Uzoho will always move on with Eagles no matter the error he makes.

No consequence at all for mediocrity.

MetalJigsaw:
This NPL home advantages sha🥱

Did you watch the match? No need to be crying foul when there's none.

komekn:
What about Fikayo Tomori he is arguably the best defender in AC Milan.

The issue is not Milan but Chukwueze better team better player's he needs to step up .

Tomori is not a Super Eagle. We are only concerned with our boy. I'm sure the three lions will look after their player well.

charlesemeka85:
yes I streamed the match

His passes and touches distabilized the opponents midfield and defense

Abegi, na bottom of the table clash na. They go soon follow enter relegation.

Don't be shocked at the AFCON next year. I heard the facilities (especially the pitches) in Cote'd Ivoire still leaves much to be desired when we have less than four (4) months to go.

Gernot Rohr, the master of qualification getting dragged

isan:
Against farmers

Nigerians sha!
If na 2-1 be the scoreline, na una go allow person sleep

EXCLUSIVE: How I Convinced My Son To Play For Nigeria — Torunarigha’s Father


Ojokojo Torunarigha has revealed how he convinced his son Jordan to switch nationality and represent the Nigeria national team.

Jordan turned down chance to play for the Super Eagles at the 2018 FIFA World Cup despite strong plea from former Super Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr.

The centre-back played for Germany at youth level, but announced in June 2023 that he has switched allegiance to represent Nigeria.

Torunarigha is now in line to make his debut for the Super Eagles against Sao Tome and Principe on Sunday (today).

“He rejected the chance to play for the Super Eagles in the past, but I had to convince him to change his mind,”

“He was like I have never come down to Nigeria before, i don’t know much about the country.

“But I had to sit him down and tell him beautiful things about the country. I told him how passionate Nigerians are about football and how much they will appreciate him.

“So far, he is loving the experience of coming down here. This is his first time in Nigeria and we hope he will play for the Super Eagles for a long time.”



Copyright © 2023 Completesports

Joebie:
Truth is Orban will have immense opportunities with Togo than Naija

This opportunities might only come in qualifiers. They ain't likely to come at the big stage like in AFCON and World Cup proper

No debut for Gift Orban tomorrow. He suffered a knock in training today. There's still hope for Togo and Benin Republic.

Rohr's Benin Republic will not be at AFCON.

WHY PESEIRO ACCEPTED NIGERIA'S SHORT-TERM DEAL


Nigeria head coach Jose Peseiro has explained why he accepted a short-term deal after his previous contract expired in June this year.


The Portuguese tactician’s new contract will expire at the end of the upcoming 2023 Africa Cup of Nations finals set to be hosted by Ivory Coast between 13 January and 11 February 2024.


Peseiro indicated that he wanted to continue as the Super Eagles coach and go on to win the AFCON title with the West African giants.


“Me and my staff did everything in order to stay here to train these players and reach the big goal – win the AFCON title,” Peseiro told Brila.


Nigeria are three-time winners of the AFCON title and the last time they lifted the trophy was in 2013 in South Africa.


Since then they finished third at the 2019 AFCON finals in Egypt and they were knocked out in the Round of 16 in the 2021 edition in Cameroon

Source : africanfootball.com

Gernot Rohr's Benin Republic suffered a last minute heart break💔 as they fell 3-2 away to Mozambique.

Jordan Torunarigha on Victor Osimhen;

"Osimhen is the best striker in the world right now. One of the best strikers in the world. And to be honest, I’ve never had something like this. I don’t know how to defend him. It’s weird.

"I played against Lewandowski and Haaland, and I figured out how to defend them. But for him, I don’t know. He’s strong, but he can keep the ball. It’s difficult, but I will find out."

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