₦airaland Forum

BankyGee:
Goalkeepers:
Stanley Nwabali
Maduka Okoye

Defenders:
William Troost-Ekong
Igoh Ogbu
Felix Agu
Ola Aina
Calvin Bassey
Benjamin Fredrick
Bruno Onyemaechi
Bright Osayi-Samuel

Midfielders:
Alex Iwobi
Wilfred Ndidi
Raphael Onyedika
Frank Onyeka
Fisayo Dele-Bashiru
Christantus Uche

Forwards:
Olakunle Olasegun
Samuel Chukwueze
Ademola Lookman
Victor Osimhen
Tolu Arokodare
Cyriel Dessers
Moses Simon

Starting XI below:
Chukwueze and Iwobi can play interchangeably on the wings and AM positions during the match...

Benjamin fedrick over Semi Ajayi
1 cap wonder vs 20 cap proven consistency?
Youth over Experience??
You need a large enough sample size (that is , appearances) to make an accurate evaluation about a player, you can’t just assess a player with the last performance only.

Chukweze is not yet an AM, don’t let the Jamaican performance fool you, he is too inconsistent and his passes aren’t there yet, any good DM will easily neutralize him. Let a winger be a Winger. No one is close to Iwobi yet!

Olakunle can’t replace Boniface yet, Boniface played well yesterday even if he has not performed his primary objective yet which is to score. His gameplay is still okay and he’s still very useful to the team (What matters is how a player improves the team not their individual stats)

Pidginwhisper:
Nobody dey talk about Tolu hold up play. I’ve watched that guy for a while now. That guy has alot to offer this team. Make the team gel wella first. We go see football from these guys. The passion is gradually coming back. . Today’s not Uche’s day. Onyedika presence on the field swallowed him. Simon moses should do and retire. Man played 90mins and put all foot wrong and almost cost is a goal

Spot on Analysis 💯
One great thing about Tolu is that he’ll be very useful for teams that want to man mark and Overshadow Osimhen like they did during AFCON as he will ease pressure off him. They will actually form a synergistic partnership especially during the SA game where I’m sure they’ll be hoping to put up a defensive/counter attack show and suffocate our attackers

Daninya33:
Here are my recommendation after watching today's game.

Ekong,Ajayi,Bruno and Osayi should be dropped going forward. Both CBs were sluggish today.I am not convinced with our RB and LB today.
Fredrick Benjamin,Igoh,AINA and Bassey should be our defenders going forward.

Our midfield trio should be Ndidi/Onyeka/Onyedika,Bashiru/ Iwobi, Uche.

Would love to see Ejuke invited to add width to our flank.
Simon Moses can't even dribble his marker,low budget Doku. I can't even remember him beating his marker.
Nathan Tella is no upgrade to the current wingers we have.

My top 3 strikers for the SE are VO9, Dessers and Tolu.

I will pick Okoye as my number 1.
He deserves it.

Well put my brother,
I feel Ogbu- Bassey will make the best partnership on paper by in reality they are too naive but good though
We’ll still need Ekong though even though he’s not the best of CBs we have, that Leadership and Experience is not negotiable in crucial matches

The best thing about our mildfield is that we now have 6 proper midfielders but how to combine them will be a headache mehn. Even on paper, it’s difficult to pick who should pair between Onyeka Onyedika Ndidi and Uche. Hopefully time will tell

Excited for this team!

Mujtahida:
He did well. He was confident

True confidence, unlike Nwabali’s insecure own.
Nwabali is still number one though, Okoye will need 2 superb games or 3 good games to displace him.
We just have to qualify for this WC mehn, this FIFA thing is really worrisome, I’m already losing Confidence about SA’s point deduction.

yinkeys:
I agree with all you put down
100% solid and accurate takes
No sentiments, just facts
Onyemaechi & Zaidu are thé regular left backs Nigeria usually call up, Agu would definitely be in the mix now though
It’s competition at the end of the day, fight for your shirt

💯

DABIGATRAN:
This your colonial mentality REALLY SUCKS and it's a huge shame to be honest.
At a time when your peers are trying to find value in their roots, you are still steeped in inferiority complex.

You want Nwabali to be replaced with a guy who plays for Wrexham because to you everything foreign is superior.
Same way some unfortunate dudes here were clamouring for Okoye to displace Nwabali automatically because he plays for Udinese.


Why do you want to give Frederick 1-2 years. He clearly put in a solid showing. I call him a proper defender. Frederick and Ogbu should have been in the team since 2023.

Nigeria deserves a better goalkeeper, Nwabali has made tremendous saves which we all appreciate as Nigerians but we are building a great team and we won’t leave any weak link in our chain! It’s just the illusion of how low Uzoho , Akpeyi, Ezenwa and Okoye have taken that spot that makes his weakness a blind spot, if he had replaced Enyeama, you’d have a different opinion. Lastly, Wrexham is now a championship side and to casually invoke the term ‘colonial mentality’ often suggests a rather simplistic grasp of nuance, paired with a curious absence of critical analysis.

GOOD MATCH AS USUAL
SUMMARY
DESSERS, UCHE AND OGBU IN
ALL HOME BASED PLAYERS OUT UNFORTUNATELY (THE COUNTRY FAILED THEIR TALENTS)
NOW OBVIOUS WHY TELLA HAS BEEN CONSISTENTLY BENCHED
AGU IS DECENT, BUT WE ALREADY HAVE DECENT LEFT BACKS, WE’RE LOOKING FOR A TAYE TAIWO OR ANOTHER OLA AINA ON THE LEFT
FEDRICK IS FOR THE NEXT 1-2YEARS, YOU CAN SEE THE SIGNS
UNPOPULAR OPINION BUT NWABALI IS A TICKING TIMEBOMB, I KNOW HE’S TRYING BUT I THINK WE SHOULD PUSH FOR THE WREXHAM GUY AND ATOBOLU AND CO. TILL WE FIND A PROFESSIONAL

Good match.
Summary of the match
Dessers and Ogbu IN
Musa and Nacho OUT (legends though )

soetanoreoluwa:
Home based super eagle dey prove themselves lol.
Ikene Arnold

Who abeg? All too average

Well it depends, When the British came in the 19th century, core British names like Florence, Margaret Hurbert, Harcourt, Wesley, Townsend, Cover, White, Duke, Cole, Boyle, Agatha etc were the trendy norms of the educated British wannabe elites. Then as Christianity spread and anti colonialism started to kick off, Nigerian started abducting Christian English names more like Paul, Victor, David, Joy, Alloysius, Grace, Favor, Blessing
Now it’s heading towards American influence as we are now seeing names like Jayden, Jordan, Jasmine, Michelle etc sighs

yinkeys:
Lol Nwabali below average
I disagree with this comment
Our best goalie since Carl Ikeme
He brought stability in between the poles
You can’t keep exposing your goalie carelessly and not expect to concede
Dude has been helping us
Nwabali is the best goalie we have
Bad performance from our defense & midfield as well as Chelle not making the right subs cost us the game

Nwabali looks good because of how bad Uzoho was, I still insist he isn’t first choice material and we can do better. You have an interesting take though and I appreciate your insight

Dannyxy:
SA, ZIM, CAR, BENIN, and all the other teams that have won or drawn us, are not good enough to beat us, but over the years Nigerian Super Eagles have lost that fear factor. Nigeria has players to dominate Africa, it’s not a fluke that we produce two African best back to back, it’s not a fluke we have players breaking records for their clubs and winning things, we have one of, if not the best set of players in Africa.

But what is the issue? let’s look in-depth and forget emotions of “our players are this or that”, last Afcon, Nigeria players played only 60% of their capacity and got to the finals of the Afcon, meaning this team is underperforming overwhelmingly when it comes to qualifiers especially home games. Our F.A needs to sit up, get things rightly, stop pressuring or picking players for the coach, all this nonsense technical committee should hands off and let the coach work, we need to get a stadium in a state with the best weather all year round, and play to our home advantage, a state that has good weather, will see our players always not gassing out, we need a a lot psychological boosting for our players, we need to make Nigeria a fortress again, remind them what it means to fight till the end, and if any player is being complacent and not bringing Osimhen energy from the first blast, scrap him out, when you wear the national team jersey you are a soldier carrying the smiles and hope of 200 million people, let them play their heart out and loose, one day we will get right, but I don’t see a Nigeria team with their head in the game fighting and playing like warriors loosing to any bloody team in Africa, talk less of this little team, this issue is whole-sum and we need to get the players working, no amount lamentations will solve it, but practical approach.

Let’s see this boys fight till the last minute, and play to their strengths, let me see which South Africa will escape.

If Zimbabwe, Benin or Lesotho played South Africa the way they played us, South Africa won’t be at the top rn trust me, We still have the fear factor which can be a double edged sword which this time, it’s slicing us

yinkeys:
We can’t beat Siuth Africa on their turf
No cohesion in the eagles
NFF will not make the list 100% on merit
The coach is new to the job & doesn’t really know the players yet, this is where technical director & staffs should’ve advised him

We can bro, it’s just tactics. The Super Eagles have a fragile loophole which is the fact that we don’t have a goalkeeper that can make “a few good saves” everything else is fine that was why Peseiro played negative football to shield the goalkeeper as much as possible, Nwabali is quite bellow average even in African standards but masks it with his theaterics and faux confidence which spectacle loving Nigerian fans can’t see through. The fact that we missed so many chances yesterday is unavoidable in life and will always happen once in a while, it is important to always have a robust last line to prevent a black swan event such as the Zimbabwean equalizer yesterday. The playoffs is looking more like our reality day by day but we’ll be worse off there if we don’t find a good GK due to it’s volatile and unpredictable nature as only robust/antifragile teams make it through not the better team. I really think Chelle and NFF should manhunt for a new GK in Europe like Atobolu and the rest.

Mujtahida:
I hate seeing Aina on the left! How can Chelle be playing the best right back in the EPL as a left back.

Nooo. This is unacceptable

Don’t worry, Aina will kill it, he’s equally good on the left

Barryseal:
Happy to hear Pedro Goncalves is in the running for the Super Eagles job.

No brainer IMO, never disappointed throughout his career.

Deltamani:
If they’re all in form, this would be my 18players list..
Goalkeepers
1. Chiamaka Nnadozie
2. Tochukwu Oluehi

Defenders:
3. Osinachi Ohale
4. Ashleigh Plumptre
5. Oluwatosin Demehin
6. Michelle Alozie
7. Rofiat Imuran

Midfielders:
8. Deborah Abiodun
9.Halimatu Ayinde
10. Christy Ucheibe
11. Jennifer Echegini
12. Rasheedat Ajibade
13. Toni Payne

Forwards:
14. Omorinsola Babajide
15. Esther Okoronkwo
16. Ifeoma Onumonu
17. Asisat Oshoala
18. Uchenna Kanu

Is Nicole Payne injured?

CornOak:
Iwobi needs to go off.

Not only Iwobi has been sub par in this game, Bassey, Aina, Zaidu, Osimhen too

Goke7:
we missed zaidu

Crazy fact

Mujtahida:
I don't like Ola Aina playing on the left.

He has done it for years at Torino, Fulham and even for us, he’ll be fine, don’t judge by that match.

Ihenzy:
Hugo Broos : " That was our worse performance at AFCON."

"We have to be strong against my friend Jose Peseiro who visited our country to pretend like he wanted to visit a Goalkeeper, but actually He wanted to spy on my Bafana camp for World cup qualifiers. Myself and Jose Peseiro we are the only two men who in the Continent to be hated so much by the media. But we communicate and remind ourselves that we are in charge,not you journalist who fuels supporters anger and criticism. All the negative begins with you before the fans can have a say. Football fans are the most important and innocent people in this game. But journalism always double cross the relationship between coaches and their fans. They call my team Sundowns to bring hate . They call Jose Peseiro team weak midfield. But we are with my friend to the semi final. Unfortunately one of us needs to go home after Wednesday. I hope we met in the Final"

"Nigeria have a golden Generation in Africa who can turn things be very quickly, meanwhile our goal as South Africa is to market our league to lead Africa and show them what is done in Europe can also be done in Africa."

This man has so much knowledge to be considered dangerous

Goke7:
I don't know why Aina always makes me remember Celestine Babayaro

Aina is a special player and we’ll only appreciate it more when he retires. Nigeria is blessed with players, but unlike the Brazilians and English we are not blessed with players like Aina, will be hard to replace him.

Who do they think renard is? . He better no come and destroy is legacy in Africa

Daninya33:
Stubborn and obstinate Jpes
I saw the line up,I no shock.

Same line up he will deploy against Guinea tomorrow,I believe.

I don't think he has plans to field Nwabili tomorrow.

Okoye is out of National team duties to improve himself and get better. His second start in the Italian Seria A.

If Uzoho fumbles he should forget about dorning the green white green again.
Self worth and respect would have made him stay away from the team with the array of blunders he has committed that has caused us games severally.

I’m really upset with Uzoho’s performances for the past two years, but then I rewatch the highlights of Man UTD and Omonoia years back when he had a deep motivation against his childhood club and I become to understand José Peseiro’s perspective. Anyway it’s still dumb sha until we’re proven wrong

MetalJigsaw:
What about Sadiq that is being invited ahead of Moffi? You think Sadiq is better than him?

Sadiq might not be a baller, but he can do magic

zuchyblink:
Yellow bip team is our first eleven

Nice 👍🏽, but hope the pitch in Côte d’Ivoire will be this good cos it would be better to train in a similar pitch to the standard of afcon

elyte89:
Dis years afcon will not be interesting cos d quality pic will not be top notch ,since dstv is not airing it …we go watch am like dt ,if we c am watch

Don’t overhype Supersport bro, in Francophone and Lusophone Africa, Orange and Canal+ does
amazing picture quality too (even better). As long as it’s not NTA or AIT, should be good.

Cecco90:
25 man list is out

From this list one problem we are going to have is that Jose Peseiro is actually naive in AFCON affairs and for the first time since Berti Vogts in 2008, We'll be going to AFCON without a coach with prior experience. In AFCON, naivety can be more costly than mediocre tactics. Jose's selection is based on pedigree, but in AFCON it is quite important you select players you'll need, we needed more midfielders, but Jose thinks its more of the level you play than who can actually do the job. in reality, a second division player will outshine a premier league superstar as long as its AFCON or African football affairs.

chrisooblog:
Based on our current player availability this is my starting Xl for AFCON.

Inshallah

Osayi Inshallah Bassey Zaidu


Onyeka Ndidi Iwobi


Boniface Osimhen Inshallah/Moses Simon?

Interesting.............. just curious to know why most people don't realize Aina is the best RB and LB currently in that team.

Damioduso1:
It he could have add Terem Moffi and Kelechi Nwakali to make it 27 men squad list. I know Olorunleke Ojo will make the squad.



Starting 11 for Afcon

1. Stanley Nwabali
2. Samuel Osayi bright
3. zaidu Sanusi
4. Semi Ajayi
5. Calvin Bassey
6. Wilfred Ndidi
7. Alex iwobi
8. Kelechi Ihenacho
9. Moses Simon
10. Victor Boniface
11. Victor Osmihen



Sure bet

Let’s face reality, Uzoho is going to man that post and the only thing we can do is pray.
Stanley Nwabili isn’t as good as you expect though

grandstar:
That's zoloft. That's drug abuse

Ok

Take sertraline 2 hours before sex