Cybereagles

waka-man wrote:Yep:
Missed 2 ANcs in a row
Youth and women's game in historic slump
Incompetent FA even by Nigerian standards
An unclear team, new manager and complete inability to score goals.

Today was not encouraging.

These are dark times for Nigerian football.

And yet

I sense Nigeria will qualify for 2018 with surprising ease.
And all because of timing.

A new captain with nothing left to prove apart from his qualities as a leaders. Rio was a dry run. His performance today a warning shot. Mikel will drive this team on and act as an elder statesman throughout the qualifiers.

The emergence of a bona fide next generation. Nacho and Iwobi will provide that wonderful combination of outstanding talent, youthful fearlessness and experience of playing in the most demanding situations. Alongside them expect the emergence of one of Imoh, Success or Osimhen to provide Nigeria with the most talented squad on the continent.

A settled back four. Balogun and Ekong make up for what they lack in talent with discipline, athleticism and ruggedness. Not since Yobo and an in form okoronkwo over a decade ago have we had such a partnership in central defence.

Around this group, a set of full backs seem on the cusp, defensive midfielders are emerging to take the load off Mikel and the erratic talents of Moses, Musa and Ighalo remain established internationals capable of hurting the best teams in the world on their day.

In addition, Cameroun and Zambia are not strong teams. Algeria I sense are over-rated, never capable of winning in sub-Saharan Africa.

Watch Nigeria qualify for the 2018 World Cup with surprising ease.

Obong wrote:I am going to give a guarantee now. Take all our World Cup qualifying matches to Uyo and we will win ALL of them!

waka-man wrote:Well let me qualify the phrase "with ease"....
We'll win all out home games and have qualified before we have to go Algeria in Nov 17.
For a comparison, Egypt qualified for ANC 2017 with ease.
That's the bet I'm making having watched all the sides and looked at the fixtures.

Ebyboy wrote:

waka-man wrote:Well let me qualify the phrase "with ease"....
We'll win all out home games and have qualified before we have to go Algeria in Nov 17.
For a comparison, Egypt qualified for ANC 2017 with ease.
That's the bet I'm making having watched all the sides and looked at the fixtures.

Nigeria WON'T qualify for the world cup talk less of qualifying with ease.
We won't win any games either.

Damunk wrote:

Ebyboy wrote:

waka-man wrote:Well let me qualify the phrase "with ease"....
We'll win all out home games and have qualified before we have to go Algeria in Nov 17.
For a comparison, Egypt qualified for ANC 2017 with ease.
That's the bet I'm making having watched all the sides and looked at the fixtures.

Nigeria WON'T qualify for the world cup talk less of qualifying with ease.
We won't win any games either.

Is this you playing safe with your bets or is it based on any objective criteria?
Becos it is just as ridiculous as wakaman stating categorically that we will qualify 'with ease'.
Or maybe that is the point you are trying to make in the first place...

Ebyboy wrote:

Damunk wrote:

Ebyboy wrote:

waka-man wrote:Well let me qualify the phrase "with ease"....
We'll win all out home games and have qualified before we have to go Algeria in Nov 17.
For a comparison, Egypt qualified for ANC 2017 with ease.
That's the bet I'm making having watched all the sides and looked at the fixtures.

Nigeria WON'T qualify for the world cup talk less of qualifying with ease.
We won't win any games either.

Is this you playing safe with your bets or is it based on any objective criteria?
Becos it is just as ridiculous as wakaman stating categorically that we will qualify 'with ease'.
Or maybe that is the point you are trying to make in the first place...

Damunk,

This is not the first time I have said this nah..........
Let me condense my view on this.........
I view the appointment of Gernot Rohr dimly to say the least. The manner of
his appointment and remuneration is unjust and callous so soon after the deaths
of two of our best indigenous coaches. The wage differential his appointment
represents is one thing. The relative despatch of his appointment and selective
relative good treatment he is receiving from our morally bankrupt officials
is another. I believe this amounts to a moral deficit that I cannot look beyond.
.

As much as I love for us to win, I find little to cheer in these circumstances.

We have not learnt any lessons. We are carrying on just like before and if we get away with it, nothing will change.

More critically, I believe our accumulation of injustices will deny us the blessings of Providence. It is from that persuasion that I posted earlier

Damunk wrote:

Ebyboy wrote:

Damunk wrote:

Ebyboy wrote:

waka-man wrote:Well let me qualify the phrase "with ease"....
We'll win all out home games and have qualified before we have to go Algeria in Nov 17.
For a comparison, Egypt qualified for ANC 2017 with ease.
That's the bet I'm making having watched all the sides and looked at the fixtures.

Nigeria WON'T qualify for the world cup talk less of qualifying with ease.
We won't win any games either.

Is this you playing safe with your bets or is it based on any objective criteria?
Becos it is just as ridiculous as wakaman stating categorically that we will qualify 'with ease'.
Or maybe that is the point you are trying to make in the first place...

Damunk,

This is not the first time I have said this nah..........
Let me condense my view on this.........
I view the appointment of Gernot Rohr dimly to say the least. The manner of
his appointment and remuneration is unjust and callous so soon after the deaths
of two of our best indigenous coaches. The wage differential his appointment
represents is one thing. The relative despatch of his appointment and selective
relative good treatment he is receiving from our morally bankrupt officials
is another. I believe this amounts to a moral deficit that I cannot look beyond.
.

I 100% agree up to this point, but it has no bearing on whether we will qualify or not. So le's read on....

As much as I love for us to win, I find little to cheer in these circumstances.

This is understandable, but very subjective. But I suspect that if the team starts to play well and even start winning again, you will cheer like never before.But it is too early to get excited, so I can empathise kind of with you here too.

We have not learnt any lessons. We are carrying on just like before and if we get away with it, nothing will change.

Yes, I agree 100% again. I said the same thing in another thread earlier today.

More critically, I believe our accumulation of injustices will deny us the blessings of Providence. It is from that persuasion that I posted earlier

Phew! I've found something to disagree with. It was getting embarrassing.
I don't really believe in Providence. If we qualify, we do so on the strength of the players and coach, but like you said earlier, nothing will change. If we don't qualify, it won't be due to Mr Providence going AWOL, but simply because we are not good enough.
And still nothing will change.

So in summary, our qualification - or failure to - will depend solely on the balance of our strengths and weaknesses: The team, the coach and the NFF.
We can safely leave Providence out of it.

YUJAM wrote:This is one if the reasons I love CE

vancity eagle wrote:I am very happy about the direction of the SE.

This team I feel is "about to explode" as some people are suggesting.

Had we been in Gabon, I feel the ANC would be ours to lose.

If we make it to Russia, teams better watch out.

But folks the sad truth is this.

Even if we play very well and are on top of our game, realistically we have no more than a coins toss odds to qualify for Russia.

This group could be decided by poor ref decisions, bad luck, or simply a moment of brilliance from a key player of any team.

Algeria is no joke and they will also be hungry to qualify. I think we are overall a better team than them, but it is very close, and when you are up against a team like that it can go either way. We have to be on our game 100% and even then it is not a given.

tfco wrote:

2015 AFCON

Enugu II wrote:

YUJAM wrote:This is one if the reasons I love CE

You gotta love it!! Kai, na real wa! Instead of simply acknowledging that Nigeria has as good a chance as the other teams, it is now that we will simply walk on all of them with ease.

Waffiman wrote:

YUJAM wrote:This is one if the reasons I love CE

After one game, waka-man of all people, has lost his marbles. Good Lawd!

waka-man wrote:

Waffiman wrote:

YUJAM wrote:This is one if the reasons I love CE

After one game, waka-man of all people, has lost his marbles. Good Lawd!

Brother Waffi truth is I wrote this on a plane before the game and failed to upload..

olu wrote:It's going to be a tough qualifying group. Algeria is very good. Games between Nigeria and Zambia in the past have traditionally been very close, while Cameroun can be a tough team if they get their act together.