₦airaland Forum

OdenigboAroli:
I guess that was your patriotic side talking.
Anyways, you are right. Our preparations were poor;most of the players Siasia invited were refued to come by their employers.Very very poor bench....Soon as Etebor and Azubike were gone I knew we had no chances. Tw of our few best players in this tournament. Etebor a deadly finisher and Azubike a warrior in the middle pack.

TheGoodJoe:
Sad we lost but we go out of that game with our heads held high. It is easy to say horrible match and heap blames on the players.

What a lot of people do not get is that outside talents and hardwork, there is also preparation. The Germans have worked for years on playing a particular way. During League breaks, they hold seminars with all the coaches, improving their games. They have Youth projects that have the kids playing a particular way.

Them beating us was not a surprise. The Germans worked hard on pressing the midfield and the defence. That made it very difficult for our players to keep the ball and attack.

First, I give a big shout out to Sadiq Umar. That kid ran his heart out. For a teenager, that to me was a brilliant display.

Mikel Obi. Our mercurial captain. For a player known for not relying on pace, his hard work to press the defence was amazing. His skill and strength in battling the Bender Twins was impressive.

Ekong. He put in a top class performance. There is no way that guy is not the future of the Super Eagles defence.

Emmanuel Daniel. Nice saves. Terrific reflexes. Kept us in the game for most of the match.

I hope this Dream Team wins the Bronze medal. They worked hard, showed determination and Belief. This was a team we can applaud and they deserve a medal for their hard work.

goldfish80:
Please let's leave out sentiments and scrutinize what we saw before our very own eyes.
I understand your sympathy with the team because of the problems they faced enroute to Brazil but we are way Pass that now because we have played 4 solid games since.

First of all, I think the team missed Etebor and Azubuike. Especially Azubuike. Siasia's refusal to make substitutions when the game against Denmark already wrapped up bite him at the end.
A clear parallel line could be drawn relatively to Azubuike getting booked and missing his game to the catastrophic performance we dished out today.

You can see the German coach making substitutions early to save his better players when the game was won.

Ndifreke Udoh was a total disaster today. He couldn't string simple passes to save his life.

Usman Mohammed, the less said about him the better. He was a passenger all through the game. Couldn't make any angle whatsoever to receive the ball and link the midfield to the attack.

Sadiq Umar in my opinion, is in the wrong sport. I feel he will do better as a basketball player. It was funny watching him atimes. He has the footwork of a giraffe, whoever compared him to Kanu must be insane.

Amuzie was just horrible. His has the technic of a 4yr old. His clownish free kick attempt was pure comedy gold.

In the end, the team played like they were a bunch of strangers who just met at the car park and decided to walk into the pitch and play.
There's no positive whatsoever I can cull from this performance. Rant over, Sorry.

OdenigboAroli:
Is it not obvious that Siasia has nothing left up his sleeves? Failed at u20 world cup,failed at Beijing 2008,failed to qualify Nigeria for Nations cup,failed to win the Olympic gold a second time! This guy is a colossal failure! It's time he take a bow. Bring on Amunike let's try a new hand or should we wait till Russia2020 before we start preparations.

otokx:
Coach Siasia failed in his selection and tactics, firstly he had no bench, secondly you substitute out your best players in inconsequential matches, thirdly you change your formation once its not working.

The problem with Nigeria is we do the same thing over and over again without success and expect a miracle.

My deepest sympathy to those of us who were deceived to be patriotic by burning petrol in our generators to watch the match.

TheGoodJoe:
I am not talking out of sentiments. So do not bring that up like if it is my point. I did not bring up the journey when talking about this game.

It is easy to criticize players if you do not look at the set up.

We had two Benders in the midfield. These two are among the finest midfielders in the game today. Even in the Champions league games, they hardly missed passes.

The Germans played a high line. This meant the defenders will support the midfield when in possession. Then we had two side midfielders, and a creative midfielder in the center.

With this set up, and two overlapping backs, we had almost ten players keeping the midfield compact.

Do you expect Udo, Usman to cope. Mikel and Sadiq pressed up this compact set up. Getting the ball in this position was crazy.

When you moved the ball to the wings, the Germans pressed together. So our players are bound to make mistakes with this set up.

Formation wise, an attacking 4-4-2 can not cope with the German set ups. Why do you think Barcelona whip teams repeatedly with high goal margins?

You think when Barca set up that way, players of the opposing teams do not make mistakes.

From the set up of both teams, the Germans must perform better. So our boys holding on for most part of the game, showed the effort they put in.

goldfish80:
Please let's leave out sentiments and scrutinize what we saw before our very own eyes.
I understand your sympathy with the team because of the problems they faced enroute to Brazil but we are way Pass that now because we have played 4 solid games since.

First of all, I think the team missed Etebor and Azubuike. Especially Azubuike. Siasia's refusal to make substitutions when the game against Denmark already wrapped up bite him at the end.
A clear parallel line could be drawn relatively to Azubuike getting booked and missing his game to the catastrophic performance we dished out today.

You can see the German coach making substitutions early to save his better players when the game was won.

Ndifreke Udoh was a total disaster today. He couldn't string simple passes to save his life.

Usman Mohammed, the less said about him the better. He was a passenger all through the game. Couldn't make any angle whatsoever to receive the ball and link the midfield to the attack.

Sadiq Umar in my opinion, is in the wrong sport. I feel he will do better as a basketball player. It was funny watching him atimes. He has the footwork of a giraffe, whoever compared him to Kanu must be insane.

Amuzie was just horrible. His has the technic of a 4yr old. His clownish free kick attempt was pure comedy gold.

In the end, the team played like they were a bunch of strangers who just met at the car park and decided to walk into the pitch and play.
There's no positive whatsoever I can cull from this performance. Rant over, Sorry.

TheGoodJoe:
I am not talking out of sentiments. So do not bring that up like if it is my point. I did not bring up the journey when talking about this game.

It is easy to criticize players if you do not look at the set up.

We had two Benders in the midfield. These two are among the finest midfielders in the game today. Even in the Champions league games, they hardly missed passes.

The Germans played a high line. This meant the defenders will support the midfield when in possession. Then we had two side midfielders, and a creative midfielder in the center.

With this set up, and two overlapping backs, we had almost ten players keeping the midfield compact.

Do you expect Udo, Usman to cope. Mikel and Sadiq pressed up this compact set up. Getting the ball in this position was crazy.

When you moved the ball to the wings, the Germans pressed together. So our players are bound to make mistakes with this set up.

Formation wise, an attacking 4-4-2 can not cope with the German set ups. Why do you think Barcelona whip teams repeatedly with high goal margins?

You think when Barca set up that way, players of the opposing teams do not make mistakes.

From the set up of both teams, the Germans must perform better. So our boys holding on for most part of the game, showed the effort they put in.

forgiveness:
I didn't have the opportunity to see the match but I knew we will have problems in the midfield without Azubuike Okechukwu and if the Germans decided to press us the same way the Colombians did. And just as TheGoodJoe just wrote they unsettled us by pressing and forcing us to play against our plans.


Siasia should have known that after the Colombia game. He should have made the Germans tired by passing the ball quickly and made them chase the ball. In such situations you must think about keeping possession of the ball. And once you don't have the ball all the players should have fallen behind the ball with expectation of hitting them with fast counter attacks.

I also knew they will try as much as possible to frustrate Mikel because he was the engine of the team. Once he is unsettled and marked out then forget about the strikers doing the damage.

TheGoodJoe:
I am not talking out of sentiments. So do not bring that up like if it is my point. I did not bring up the journey when talking about this game.

It is easy to criticize players if you do not look at the set up.

We had two Benders in the midfield. These two are among the finest midfielders in the game today. Even in the Champions league games, they hardly missed passes.

The Germans played a high line. This meant the defenders will support the midfield when in possession. Then we had two side midfielders, and a creative midfielder in the center.

With this set up, and two overlapping backs, we had almost ten players keeping the midfield compact.

Do you expect Udo, Usman to cope. Mikel and Sadiq pressed up this compact set up. Getting the ball in this position was crazy.

When you moved the ball to the wings, the Germans pressed together. So our players are bound to make mistakes with this set up.

Formation wise, an attacking 4-4-2 can not cope with the German set ups. Why do you think Barcelona whip teams repeatedly with high goal margins?

You think when Barca set up that way, players of the opposing teams do not make mistakes.

From the set up of both teams, the Germans must perform better. So our boys holding on for most part of the game, showed the effort they put in.

goldfish80:
By the way, hope you do realise that the Bender twins development have stagnated over the years.
For two seasons Lars Bender have fallen way below the ladder that is why you have no top club coming for him these days. He is a player Arsene wenger has been monitoring over the past 3 years but he signed Xhaka instead of him.

Same story with Sven Bender, he is a bench boy at Dortmond. Lost his place to Kevin GroBKreutz for two seasons now.
Joachim loew rather went to the world cup and Euros with Kimmich and Christoph Krammer than any of the Benders.

To see these two players bossing our team in midfield was really a torture to behold.

goldfish80:
All these things you pointed out are relative. The tactics siasia employed was defective.

First of all, I noticed he played Troost at the right side of the defence. I don't think he loves playing there. He kept trying to play from the back and kept giving the it away in dangerous positions. Probably the idea to play Troost there was to help Shehu put Gnarby in check. This decision in the end didn't work because the Germans attacked from the left where Amuzie was totally out of his dept.
Sincere did little to help him out. This explains why the first goal came from that part.

Again, irrespective of Siasia's tactical error, it does not explain why the team should play in such a disjointed manner. It was a big shame at this level when the whole world was watching, our boys struggled to so basic things on the pitch, like trapping, passing, heading and crossing the ball properly. How do you explain how a pro like Amuzie would balloon the ball high into the stands with an attempt to whip the ball in?

How do you explain why a pro like Udoh couldn't play simple 5yard pass accurately under little or no pressure?

Usman Mohammed rarely touched the ball all night long but he was supposed be our central midfielder?

Siasia's tactical deficiencies are well documented. People are quick to mention how he won silver at U20 and Beijing easily forget the brains behind those teams was the Dutch guy Simon Kalika.
His records without the Dutch guy is there for all to see.

AIG07:
you mean a fast game?

Oh no o. That was d first place we got t wrong last night. D fast game wore our team out quickly n we couldn't match them up again in d second half.

Long and fast balls against d germans is just playing to their strength. They are tall n always fast most especially on counter.

My problem with our local coaches is their inabilities to read game and change plans. They only stick to d game plan de planned before d match. That is why I do question their technical n tactical know-how of d game in most cases @senior level of football like this one(u-23, senior team n sometimes d u-20s).

Playing a 4-4-2 with below average mid-fielders was suicidal. I expected him to choke up d midfield with d available players.

Well, d did has been done. But d only thing that saddenes my heart is d refusal of our coaches to learn from their mistake. Immediately our guys were short of ideas in d latter part of d match n everyone was shouting Atlanta 96@ d ball house. I only asked my self this simple question "who do we call on to do d magic?" there was no one on d bench.

The team was just average. Luck, hardwork +few individual brilliancy only saw us tru dis far. Not a bad outing anyway. Hope we can clinch d bronze.

joseph1013:
[b]Joe, these are mere excuses for a team that had the potential of doing much better. I said before this match that after watching the German's game against Portugal that the only shot we have with this team is to play like we did against Sweden and for Mikel and Imoh to bring their very best. Only Mikel came close to his best.

You can keep saying that the german team play in a certain way. But let me ask you, is that the reason we cannot string simple passes together? Is that why Amuzie could not make crosses even if his life depended on it? Is that why Amuzie hoofed a freekick and would not have gone net-wards if the goal post was increased to twice its size? Is that why Udoh was making reckless tackles and almost sent off?

Even as great as you think the German were, they are not flawless. Have they won all their matches in this tournament? No! Have they gone the entire tournament without conceding goals? No! So what's the talk of the structure of the German team as if they were impenetrable. Look at the counter attacks we had all game. WE COULD NOT STRING SIMPLE PASSES IN TRANSITION. You would think these guys have never played together. The commentator was even frustrated and kept wondering why the German keep giving us those chances, yet we never could use none of them.

It was why I wanted Siasia to move Mikel to DM to just take those balls and spray them to Imoh. The most frustrated player in that match was Ezekiel because they kept giving him balls that were just too long. On the occasion when he had a huge chance at goal and was fouled, the referee refused to give a foul. I cursed under my breath.

In conclusion, Siasia is the architect of our disaster. Imagine if he had not gone with Ekong, Mikel, Sadiq and Imoh, we would have been disgraced. We were killed because we didn't have more of them on the bench. Imagine if Oduduwa was in that defence instead of Ekong like Siasia wanted to do before his injury.

The only sympathy I have for this team is how poorly they were treated and the terrible episode of getting to Rio. But we have played four games after then, what is their excuse? [/b]

forgiveness:
No, I don't mean fast game, I mean the way we use to control the game against first playing teams.


Just play slowly and frustrate them.

TheGoodJoe:

The competition in Germany is high. That is why those guys are on the bench in the German squad. I will take any of those two over Xhaka any day.

Their abilities are way above Xhaka. Watch when those guys clear out the ball. With head or legs, it goes to a team mate. They hardly misplace their passes.

TheGoodJoe:

Spot on again.

We should have played deeper, controlled the game by keeping the ball close with less penetrative passes.

Mikel who is our best possession player should have played in the middle of the action. His side ways and backward passes would help. Mikel should have helped slow the game.

However, that is not Coach Siasia's philosophy of the game.

goldfish80:
Xhaka and Guondogan were the best holding midfielders in the bundesliga last season that's by the way.

My point is that the Bender boys have seen there stuck go down over the past few seasons. They were like the great German hope in their teens. They have made little progress since then.
Tuchel considered doing selling Sven at a point.

Non of the twins making the Euros and world cup squad when even younger and inexperienced players like Kramer and Kimmich made the team says it all.

OdenigboAroli:
His philosophy is to attack as a form of defence and I ask attack with what. We have no single attacking midfielder in that team and please don't mention Usman Mohammed. An attacking midfielder that can't hold ball in his feet for seconds or play good passes. Mikel is a holding midfielder while Azubuike is a complete DM in the mould if Oliseh. See? Nothing to attack with!