₦airaland Forum

tbaba1234:
Eni Aluko has been vindicated. It has been proven that he did make racist remarks against her. The FA tried to cover it up and she faced a lot of backlash.

forgiveness:
In regards to Obagoal, Ike Uche and Odenwinge, I think they are very good and you are sure to get a goal with these guys.

Unfortunately, when these players were banging in goals left right center in Europe our bad belle coaches decided to drop them for lesser strikers.

However, if these three players are still banging in goals left right and center, I don't mind they are invited to the National team because we don't have any inform young striker in the best leagues in Europe and in the National team that can lace their shoes.

As it being that Kelechi and Kayode (because they are the only two consistent prolific strikers playing at the highest level) are banging in goals left right and center, I don't need to even think about these men but because as sand sand don pass garri, I will prefer Martins and ike Uche if they continue to score goals for their clubs. I don't know about Odenwinge.


However, I think we can split the three slots for the striker to three categories.

I. For informed experienced striker
II. For a mixed of both informed young and experienced striker
II. For very young informed striker


Based on these categories,

Category 1

Odion Ighalo - 14 goals and 3 assists (25 games in CSL)

Obafemi Martins - 7 goals and 3 assists (12 games in CSL)

Osaze Odenwinge 13 goals and 5 assists out of 18 games in Indonesia)

Ikechuckwu Uche 5 goals and 0 assist out of 8 games in the la Liga 2

Brown Ideye clubless

Anthony Nwakaeme 0 goals and 1 assist out of 5 games in Israel


Category 2

Ahmed Musa - EPL
Kayode Olanrewaju - LA Liga
Aaron Samuel - Russia
Ebere Paul Onuachu - Denmark
Simeon Nwankwo - Seria A

Category 3

Kelechi Iheanacho
Tammy Abraham
Cyriel Dessers
Dominic Solanke
Dennis Bonaventure
Peter Olayinka
Taiwo Awoniyi
Osimhen
Sadiq Umar



Based on current form and pedigree of leagues, please choose one from each categories, we are good to go.

Please, no sentiments and give reasons.

Joebie:
Thank you! I don't think we ever had it right with grassroots development.

Kog45:
Good old days primary school,not safari aje butter primary school.

Principal Cup produced 1985 Golden Eaglet,one of my area brother Dele Abubakar made d team.I remember Nduka Ugbade made d team direct from st Finbarrs,so sometimes am always wondering why we always tagged our boys as over aged.

It was after Kodak U17 WC in 1985 that Kwara State hosted youth sports festival, most of these players represented their various states,Victor Igbinoba(Bendel)now Edo,Nduka Ugbade(Lagos)Fatal Atere(Lagos)Bella Momoh(Edo)Dele Abubakar(Kwara)

It must be noted that majority of 1987 U17 were products of Kwara sport festival, player like Dimeji Lawal,Bawa Abdullahi, Oladuni Oyekale,Peter Ogaba Christopher Nwosu.

The final of d sport festival was a thriller match between Bendel and Anambra with Victor Igbinoba scoring d goal

Pure secondary school boys then,Nigeria just need to go back to grassroots sports development.

Mickael2:
So Nacho left the game and Leicester actually started looking like a decent side but we all want to believe that it is Leicester that makes Nacho look bad? I mean I am a Nigerian, Arise O Compatriots and all that crap but this? This is pure BS. Nacho won't be starting the next game and I wouldn't blame the coach, he simply did not take this chance.


And oh, throwing tatrums at your teammates when you are not playing well won't help either

tbaba1234:
Yes, he benched Pantillimon. That is very impressive.

Reuben is the first choice but he is out injured. Pantillimon was brought in at the last minute to replace him but his performances have been suspect.

It takes a brave coach to rely on an 19 year old with no experience.

forgiveness:
JORDAN TORUNARIGHA

Joebie:
Pinnick is working. People just want to be heard when they fear they have lost relevance. Trying to get Nigerian players who can add something to the team at the moment and improving our grassroots development program are two different things -- Apples and Oranges. Make your point without condemning our fine efforts. Alaba wanted to play for Nigeria. It's dumb to have ignored him with the excuse of focusing on homegrown talents.

PDPGuy:
It’s now official, the 8 seeded teams at the World Cup will be:

Russia
Brazil
Germany
Belgium
Argentina
Portugal
France
Poland

Humility017:
he keep saying talents abound in the league....same league I watch on tv
he talks wayside sometimes....

I remember how he kicked against the employment of rohr....citing his failures before he even get to start the job...

Kog45:
The man said it all, our developmental plans have been d issue,truly talents abound in Nigeria but who to discover them.

The secondary schools game is dead,Principal cup gone,YSFON collapsed, NIPOGA game no more attention, NUGA game d same thing, these are d games that produced players for our various national teams.

How can we revive all these is left for various sporting federation to put their house in order and put a great mechanism in place to salvage d situations coz it has reached a stage we just have to do something about it.

Apart from football or may be basketball that are still trying to put smiles on d faces of sports fans,other games brings nothing,d worst of it all is d athletics.

This is a game that has produced great athletes like Dele Udoh,Ahmed Adio,Chidi Imoh,Innocent Egbunike,Mary Onyali,Falilat Ogunkoya,Olapade Adenikan,Ezenwa brothers,Chioma Ajunwa but can we say now,mediocre running for Nigeria.

Football still a force to reckon with coz d talents are abound not that we get it right through fundamentals plans and we should thanks d individuals football academies that spring up to fill d gap created by non functional football federation grassroots plans.

Onigbinde said do we need to beg any foreign born players to play for us?definitely NO but in d absence of good foundation what do we do?we just need to beg.I know d man was referring to Tammy Abraham situation.

The man said just few minutes he was able to discover Enyeama.I remember i had a lengthy discussion with my former university coach in person of Amusa Adisa who happened to be goalkeeper trainer to 2002 WC.

I asked him what gave u that confidence to pick Enyeama ahead of Shorunmu against England, he said when u see a talent irrespective of experience u don't care,he said prior to WC Enyeama had only one cap in a grade b friendly.

I asked why can't we discovered more Enyeama and he said most of our grassroots games are no longer functioning and it w take a miracle to see a special players for national team and our coaches are not helping d situation.

Honestly there are a lot of talents wasting away coz nobody to see them,those saddle with d responsibilities are not doing enough.Thanks for football academies that came to d rescued.

i remember i how i try to convince Ex polish international Emma Olisadebe after our VC cup in d university,I went to him and told him point blank that did u know u are better than KANU Nwankwo,he looked at me and said u are not serious,again during Governor Cup that my school participated,during this match we beat a very solid team 6-1 and he scored 5 goals.The fans in d stadium were surprised to see such talent in d university.The two local league club try to sign him but refused.

Luckily for him he made world university game team and put shooting star Edith Agoye permanently on d bench.It was Fanny Amu that later told him point blank that u are wasting your talent.The rest is history d same Olisadebe later represent Poland in d WC after Nigeria refused to call him.He single handedly took Poland to 2002 WC,had a goal against USA.

To buttress Onigbinde points, talents abound in sec sch,polytechnics, universities and there is need we revive our youth games like Principal cup,YSFON,focus on NIPOGA,NUGA,these are d only way we can save our sports.

I remember my secondary school represented Nigeria in Sweden in handball game and same thing we represent Nigeria in Canada,this was in 80s,so why are we finding it difficult to do d same thing now.

Humility017:
somebody should please tell this man to mind his business

tbaba1234:
Boring game, he made a few saves. I guess that is what gave him the MOTM rating.

Chrismario:
Uzoho starting for Deportivo in laliga vs Eibar.

Mickael2:
ok so all the other teams from the Afcon olympic qualifiers were all bad except Germany and Colombia because we lost to both, isn't that a biased judgement? Actually I guess you have not been following North American football but Honduras just qualified for the world cup playoffs ahead of USA with largely the same set of players at the Olympics, some shiity team right?


Now you are trying to run down the quality of the last Olympics, I expected that anyways but you can only defeat what you have infront of you right? And Siasia did that, is he to be blamed for the 'supposed' lack of quality? Bias

how that semifinal against Germany was so one-sided sure beats me when we got atleast 5 very good chances to score, maybe you need to watch the game again no?


Atleast we can agree now that Siasia took us to the Rio Olympics without preparing or Kalika and still came back with a bronze medal, we are making progress

7) Kelechi Iheanacho
Ah, the supposed £25m bargain of the summer, the striker with the ridiculous goals-per-minute ratio who had scored 21 times in two seasons despite never really playing football at Manchester City, who was so highly valued that City insisted on securing first dibs ahead of him inevitably scoring 20 goals in his first season. Yes, that Kelechi Iheanacho. He has so far started one Premier League game, scored no goals and attempted two shots (both blocked).
“His goalscoring record is excellent. He gives us another dimension. He wants to get better, he wants to play regularly and hopefully we can give him that platform,” said manager Craig Shakespeare before the season, but the Leicester manager cannot quite bring himself to split up the partnership of Jamie Vardy and Shinji Okazaki. This is the club who have made 11 signings in the last three windows and yet, of those, only Harry Maguire and Wilfred Ndidi started the 0-0 against Bournemouth at the weekend. They don’t like incomers in Leicester.

Mujtahida:
Thank you. Load your Canon, Aim, Fire!
On a more serious note, I say it's still early days to start making such comparisons between Rohr and Siasia and I can see that you have deftly avoided lauding Rohr whether in his 'now famed' man management style or tactical ability but you are focusing on Siasia because the track record is there. Rohr needs a run of time too before we can settle this issue.

I know something about words:you repeat them often and then it sticks and sometimes passes as reality until it is examined. That's what they are doing now: he's not tactical, he's not tactical, he's not tactical and before long that notion becomes fixed. I repeat even with seven wins (five for the WCQ qualifiers, two friendlies) two draws and one defeat over a period of one year is in my estimation still too early to start making comparisons.

Mujtahida:
Please drive home this point. I didn't follow the Eagles much during Siasia's era and so I lacked the necessary information to carry on the debate with Mickael2. However I was struck by the fact that he was comparing a Siasia who failed to qualify Nigeria for Afcon with Rohr who lost just a match to South Africa.

As we talked, I asked him how much he knew of Nigeria’s first round opponents. He said not much.
It was too late to go and watch Brazil, which were their first opponents, but he asked if I could go and watch South Korea and give him a report, which I did.
I knew he never looked at my report after the game and it was not too long ago that he admitted it.
Nigeria lost and was now walking a tight rope.
They had to win the last game against Switzerland to continue in the competition and I even learnt that the NFA had started making plans for the team to return home.
Samson called me and asked me if I could watch Switzerland for him. I asked myself; why would I want to do that if he would not bother using my report
We talked about it and I was saying that we should go for an all out attacking plan. I told him I was only giving him what I believed was good advice but then I did not know the players and the team well enough to know if it would work.
I guess taking my advice was also going to be difficult for him. We had not known each other for more than one, two weeks. I said he knew them better than I did and should know if he had the players to play that way.
He went with what I told him and I can say that game against the Swiss turned out to be the best by the team during the tournament. That the team won by scoring three goals consolidated our relationship.
Maybe, if things had gone the other way, we would have gone our separate ways.
I went on to do similar work for him for the remaining games; against Ukraine, Holland and Argentina.

Mickael2:
I didn't want to take this up but ok. Was Kalika at the Rio Olympics? No. Now one of the characteristics of a tactically sound manager is his ability to work with whatever he has at that particular time. Coming to the Rio games Etebo was our main attacking threat, he got injured in the first game yet the team continued strong without him. Azubuike got suspended and if not for Sadiq Umar we would have defeated Germany, easily. So the reason why we finished third was not because the coach was poor, infact the only reason why we finished third was because of the tactical strength of our bench and their ability to devise a working solution in the face of injury to key players, withdrawal of players and lack of preparation. If Iheanacho was in that match against Germany he would have buried two chances atleast and we would be singing his praises right now, was Kalika part of that team I ask again.


On the other hand we have Rohr, the only game where he had to deal with injuries and unavailiability of key players guess what? We lost and we lost woefully without a single shot on target IIRC, what was our excuse? He is still new to the job but Siasia on his own part without even preparing well enough took an average side(after the withdrawal of several key players) despite further injuries to key players and still got to the semifinals. We can fault Siasia's team selection but saying that his success was because of Kalika is ridiculous

Mickael2:
great, so why didn't we just hire Kalika?

Mickael2:
you blame him for two nations cup failures where he took over for the last two games but if I blame Rohr for our woeful performance against SA you will say it is part of the rebuilding process? That he is just new to the job right? Fear God.


There are two things you should do, go and watch the match we played against Guinea, the draw and tell me if it in anyway compares to the woeful performance against SA, we had the chances in that game but the players missed them, it's just like blaming Pep for City's lack of a true finisher last season.

Then watch those two friendlies against Argentina, even the one we lost and see just how good tactically he is. We are not saying Siasia is a better a manager but better tactician? It is not even close

BascoVanVeli:
AFCON is just one piece of the puzzle, remember Auba won it even after Yaya had won an AFCON. ViMo is a premier league winner who beat the last African player of the year to a world cup ticket. I will be ashamed of Africa if he doesn't win because this young man has changed football as people know it. For god sakes even Arsenal play 3 @ the back now and ViMo is a major reason why they do that.

blueto:
Enough of this please. Should we also attribute Moses's havoc against Cameroon to Iheanacho that was sitting on bench? Moses can cause havoc against any African side anytime anyday! with or without nacho. Should we also attribute Mikel's goal and Moses's second goal against Algeria to Nacho's “constant running?” Stop making reference to the words of a coach who waa just looking for an excuse for failure to defeat Nigeria.

BascoVanVeli:
IMO ViMO has locked down the African player of the year award hands down. All that is left is for his to practice his acceptance speech.

Mickael2:
Everybody was tensed but I wasn't. I always knew the game would be close and immediately we scored a goal it was over.


Where Goldfish dey, 3-0 right? The Zambians played well and they should have been a goal up, exactly what I expected them to do but God was totally on our side, they became less clinical unlike when they met us and we managed to hold out

Joebie:
Super Eagles Camp Update:

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Akpeyi Steals The Show In Eagles First Training Session With Point Blank Saves, Stops Penalty
October 3, 2017013


Daniel Akpeyi was the main attraction during the Super Eagles training session watched by Owngoalnigeria.com Maxwell Pius at the training pitch of the Godswill Akpabio Stadium.

The Eagles had a light session before splitting into two groups of 8 players each for a practice game, which Akpeyi excelled with save after save to frustrate the forwards he was up against.

Akpeyi was difficult to beat throughout the session, and his form is a confirmation of how well he has been performing for his Premier South Africa League side Chippa United‎.

The highlight of his performance was stopping a penalty from Leicester City Star Ahmed Musa, and the manner which he stopped shots during their shooting drills.

Although Ikechukwu Ezenwa didn’t do badly, Akpeyi was by far the most impressive, however he was up against some of the top strikers of the team so that means he was constantly under pressure as they mounted attacks after attack.

A decision on who will start between the duo is expected to be made in the coming days, but for now Akpeyi is in the lead after his performance this evening.

Maxwell Pius

--OwnGoalNigeria