₦airaland Forum

Takeaways:

Dessers is good. He should get more chances.

In that team today, only Aribo, Iwobi, Ajayi, Bassey, Awaziem, Dessers and Uzoho should be playing matches for Nigeria. The rest are not good enough to even get invited if we are looking to build a world beating team.

Simon's decision making is so abysmal, I don't know how a player that loses the ball with every two touches should be playing international football for Nigeria.

Ekong, business as usual.

Bassey is a baller on the ball. Off it there is a lot to be improved, especially with positioning. You can already see the TAA traits in his crossing and dribbling. Also, he is not as fast as he thinks he is, if he didn't learn that against Ghana he sure did today. Pace will not cover for poor positioning, and I hope he realizes that.

Moffi has a long long way to go. I was surprised not to see Awoniyi invited, he would have done much better.

The home based showed why they were home based. The Faisal guy (no. 7) tried though, although it is nigh impossible to play worse than what Bonke displayed today.

Peseiro has Rohr genes. Defend as long as you are not losing. We could have done much more if we started the first half the way we started the second half.

chuks404:
why will u blame ekong. Did u see mosses simon
He is the wrong personnel in this formation.

Moses Simon got caught out badly. He is mainly at fault for this goal.

AndSunGorilla:
Will the Portugal connection give Zaidu an advantage? Zaidu is good on his day no doubt but could this be a plus as well for him?

Zaidu and Bassey can and should start together. Bassey as left CB, Zaidu as LB.

BascoVanVeli:
IMO Balogun is not better than Omeruo.

Balogun has been our best CB for years now, even bombing forward to create chances from the back.

The only bad game I can remember Balogun having was that Madagascar game. He has always been excellent with the NT.

Omeruo is far far behind. Balogun is better than Ekong when both are paired, everyone knows that. Is Omeruo better than Ekong? 50/50.

jihday:
but he’s not technical nau, he can’t score cullers, he can’t play shot from midfield

Must you be KDB before you win award?

He is trying. Personally I think there were more deserving players in terms of impact (Leao, Tonali for instance) but he has done well enough to win the award (and is the best at his club, which is 3rd in the league).

Hope he does more next season. Victor is good enough to hit Immobile numbers, hopefully he wins golden boot next season.

Meliforme:
Thank you TheSuperNerd for the exposition on some of the stories trailing Awaziem's club career. Awaziem is a defender that i rate ahead of some EPL defenders. Before this story by you i thought Awaziem was just one of those skillful players that are just unlucky, now i know better.

Calvin Bassey is in red hot form. He is burgeoning into a very skillful defender, but as things stands, i will pick Awaziem, Balogun and Omeruo ahead of him in central defence, Bassey looks like someone who is open to new ideas. I believe he will improve more with time.

Balogun is better than Omeruo.

Bassey benches Balogun for club.

Awaziem is good but a journeyman. I can’t rate him until he becomes relevant in Europe. Similar to Awoniyi pre-Union, abundant talent but needs to settle and prove himself.

Bassey starts over all our CBs today. I can’t remember any CB we have had in recent years that is consistently performing at such a high level.

Samueltemi337:
This stupid coach nor start osimhen

Last game of the season against a poor club with already decided positions and the player courting 100-million money suitors? What did you expect?

These boys are too good.

Passing, dribbling, control, pressing. They have everything.

They play like an U17 set. Scoring long rangers for fun.

Top bins.

TheSuperNerd:
Just Rest. It's not that hard.

I know we have to use superlatives for players we love, but it isn’t good to bash other well-performing players as a result. Victor had an excellent game against Bremer doesn’t equal Bremer had a bad game against Victor. Both are among the best in their positions and their battles show that. They both did excellently and we should equally praise them both.

TheSuperNerd:
You are not a Victor fan. Given the chance you will always pick Sadiq ahead of Victor. So disguise not Doom.

Vlahovic didn't deserve it. Osimhen scored far more match winners in serie A than Vlahovic. His goals won more points than Vlahovic's. These and doing so despite battling some time on the sidelines thus playing far lesser games in volume compared to Vlahovic yet Osimhen practically kept Napoli in the title race long into the season. Serie A chose the best and it is well deserved.

Bring the stats for these.

Remember Vlahovic has 24 goals this season and Victor has 14.

Inevitably many of these goals would be match winners, so intuitively Vlahovic would probably have as much or more match winners than Victor even when you delete his other goals.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

TheSuperNerd:
Bremer got owned by Victor Osimhen. It is common knowledge on twitter among folks I discuss serie A with. Rest.

And what you say isn't fact. Rest x10.

Who are these Twitter folks? I would love to hear their opinion.

In fact, I will put up a poll on the official English Napoli fans discord, so that fans who watch games in person can decide whether Bremer got “owned” or not. After all, if anyone thinks Victor “owned” Bremer, it should be Napoli fans themselves, shouldn’t it?

TheSuperNerd:
You are not a Victor fan. Given the chance you will always pick Sadiq ahead of Victor. So disguise not Doom.

Vlahovic didn't deserve it. Osimhen scored far more match winners in serie A than Vlahovic. His goals won more points than Vlahovic's. These and doing so despite battling some time on the sidelines. Serie A chose the best and it is well deserved.

Interesting.

My appraisal of a player does not mean I don’t support another.

The fact that I praise Sadiq a lot does not mean I prefer him over Victor. There are things Sadiq can learn from Victor’s game, as there are things Victor can learn from Sadiq’s game.

By the way, you should be more mature than mere personal attacks. I gave an opinion with reasoning, debunk it with reasoning without resorting to below the belt tactics.

TheSuperNerd:
He got owned. Simple version. Watched both legs more than twice. Every talent has their boogeyman. Rest.

I also watched both legs. No one got owned. Rest.

I am a big Victor fan, even in multiple Napoli fan groups because of him. In fact, he is my namesake.

I am not bashing him, it is just a fact. I can mention multiple games where he totally owned defenders, the Torino games were not one of them.

andrewbaba44:
Suddenly ramsdale is better than Pickford because he is an arsenal player ,I like ramsdale and people on this thread can testify

Pickford is England number 1 for a reason

So Ben white better pass yerry Mina because una buy am 50 million from Brighton

Seamus Coleman is better than tomiyasu

Arsenal and Everton might as well be in switched positions if not for some variables. Squad wise, the difference is less than you think.

TheSuperNerd:
Serie A Award Winners FT Osimhen

Best U23 Player: Victor Osimhen (Nigeria/SSC Napoli)

Best Goalkeeper: Mike Maignan (France/AC Milan)

Best Defender: Gleison Bremer (Brazil/Torino)

Best Midfielder: Marcelo Brozovic (Croatia/Inter Milan)

Best Striker: Ciro Immobile (Italy/SS Lazio)


Note: Bremer faced Osimhen twice in Serie A and got owned twice but that takes nothing away from the class and quality of Bremer who leads Serie in Interceptions per game and is top in the league for clearances per game. A real rock the Brazilian is. Shows you more of the Monstrous quality possessed by Osimhen.

Huge Congrats Victor.

Bremer didn’t get owned, it was 50/50 across both legs. Osi’s goal was due to that scrambled header towards the end of the game which wasn’t Bremen’s fault. Besides that Bremer held him both legs.

TheSuperNerd:
Serie A Award Winners FT Osimhen

Best U23 Player: Victor Osimhen (Nigeria/SSC Napoli)

Best Goalkeeper: Mike Maignan (France/AC Milan)

Best Defender: Gleison Bremer (Brazil/Torino)

Best Midfielder: Marcelo Brozovic (Croatia/Inter Milan)

Best Striker: Ciro Immobile (Italy/SS Lazio)


Note: Bremer faced Osimhen twice in Serie A and got owned twice but that takes nothing away from the class and quality of Bremer who leads Serie in Interceptions per game and is top in the league for clearances per game. A real rock the Brazilian is. Shows you more of the Monstrous quality possessed by Osimhen.

Huge Congrats Victor.

As much as I am a big Victor fan, Vlahovic deserved this one though. 2nd highest goal scorer, made his big money move, etc etc.

BannedLarge:
Was it not the same non agidi bassey that we saw vs ghana

He wasn't bad against Ghana.

Also those were his first caps, even Osimhen looked out of place in his first cap.

andrewbaba44:
Calm down subzero

I love the boy ,he deserves all the praise he is getting ,bassey is destined for bigger things ,but please you are too quick with what you said .

The guy has a higher ceiling than any of our players, and I am counting Ndidi and Osimhen. He has the physical qualities they both have, combined with the technical qualities you get when you learn football growing up in European academies. Adding to that, LB is the position in football with the least competition (for context, the best left backs in the world are Davies, who is still very young and inexperienced, Robertson, who is not the best physically and is getting old, and Cancelo, who is a RB playing makeshift LB). When you combine all that, I believe he is the player in our team that if he keeps developing and making the right moves, can genuinely be the best in the world at his position in the near future.

Subzero047:
They still put Kent because of English tax

Kent is the white Moses Simon lol.

isan:
Why will a £60M player be paid 400k a week ? Has that ever happened before ? U sef reason am

Ronaldo is though, albeit because of his commercial value.

andrewbaba44:
Haaland didn’t cost more than 65 million ,cost Lesser than lukaku , harvetz ,Jadon sancho ,but agenda must agenda

But agenda must make you add him salary

Shameless liar

I wish Osi had a low release clause in his contract.

Well, I don't know how these things work, I'll admit. However, if you as a player know your quality, make sure you negotiate a low release clause in your contract. It should be high enough that your club recoups the money on your head with jara, but low enough that you can easily find a club to step up to when the time comes.

Many clubs that are interested in Osimhen will not be able to do anything because ADL will slam like 120 million euros on his head which is unrealistic and discouraging. That is how the man has been able to keep guys like Koulibaly, Mertens, Zielinski etc at the club even when big offers from Man Utd, Bayern, etc came in.

10 home based is too much.

I would have had 2 GKs, 1 defender, 2 MF, 1 attacker.
Most of the invited guys won’t play anyways, so it’s better to invite few that we can fix eyes on like with Anayo back then.

forgiveness:
So no Awoniyi despite all the goals he has scored.

That is what we are seeing o.

Odunayaw:
Musa hasn't lost his pace as bad as you are saying it. Haba

We don't want him getting called up. And that's it

Pace isn't why he was being called up before anyway

Remind me the last game you saw Musa beat anyone with pace.

The last I remember was against Tunisia at AFCON 2019 where he gave the right back a yellow card. Since then, blank.

elyte89:
Leon balogun
Musa

Suppose don resign.....shame no catch dem?

Balogun is still useful.

But you see that Musa ba, that guy should have been gone since. He really has no relevance in the team asides carrying captain badge. The pace we used to celebrate him for is gone from his game at just 29. No player with that kind of pace loses it so badly before 30 except they are age cheating, Vardy at 36 is still fast even though it has reduced.

zuchyblink:
The list

Crazy how they managed to sneak in Zuby despite doing nothing this season. Even Nwobodo in the same league has been far better.

BTW why don't we have Onyedika in the team yet? Why aren't we making strides for Ugochukwu?

Eibar's loss today means Almeria is 90% in La Liga next season. Good day for Sadiq.

ESPN+ commentators hitting the nail on the head on Chukwueze's dilemma.

Extremely talented. World class, Salah-esque flashes. Dribbles two players to create a big chance, then shows abysmal decision making in the final third.

BascoVanVeli:
Osimhen did exact same thing after an Insigne dummy. U guys get away with all these comments because league copyright their matches. If not I would show u exactly how wrong u are.

I watch all Napoli games.

It is one thing to dummy a pass to put another player in a better position. Osimhen did it for Mertens' first goal against Empoli.

It is another thing to use a dummy to effectively create a big chance for yourself. For example, what Vinicius Jr. did with Fernandinho for his goal against City.

Osimhen does the earlier easy. I have barely ever seen him do the latter.

mostob:
blunders?

Did you watch our last game?

lbrichman2:
Sadiq with a goal
Almeria now topping Liga Smart Bank on 76pts
Though Eibar have a game in hand on 74 pts

Both teams look a sure bet for promotion to la Liga

Gear up guys, except he leaves Almeria, we'll be watching Sadiq in La Liga next season!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC4B6APJvSY

Watch from 1:03.

This is exactly what Osimhen lacks - movement.

Osimhen in that situation will hold the ball up and try to play in someone else, ruining the chance.

Sadiq just needs some physical development (stamina, aggressiveness, hold-up, fluidity, etc) to be elite. Has everything else, really.