Algeria 1 Belgium 2 [FT]

[anikulapo]

I am sad!! But Belgium did what Nigeria couldn't do. I was hoping Fellani was out injured. I was not too happy to see him come in. Algeria just lost focus for a split second there allowing Belgium crosses after crosses. Oh well.

Belgium does not have Keshi as their coach and Musa was not crossing the ball for them.

[Cellular]

I am sad!! But Belgium did what Nigeria couldn't do. I was hoping Fellani was out injured. I was not too happy to see him come in. Algeria just lost focus for a split second there allowing Belgium crosses after crosses. Oh well.

Belgium does not have Keshi as their coach and Musa was not crossing the ball for them.

Doc, first goal was a header from a cross/longball? No?

Second goal was from a counter... because Algeria strayed off the strategy of parking the bus and got caught out.

The difference makers were the subs... our subs came on and our game improved as well.

The discipline to park the bus and not let your ego get in the way is not easy... I have mentioned it time and time again about giving your opponent credit but we don't have that in our make up.

Two African teams Ghana and Algeria... could have settled for the point late in games but they inextricably gave their opponents opportunities which the opponents seized... and here I thought that our naivete was a thing of the past.

[Bigpokey24]

The best African side I've seen so far at this WC. Very well organised and look very comfortable.

And you were saying ?

Some natives are always in a hurry to denigrate Naija...

From what I've seen they're more organised than Nigeria. The question is are they interested in winning this game?

You can't make this ish up... Talk about speaking from both sides of your mouth.... More organized and down 1-2 after taking a lead.

All of a sudden they are no longer interested in winning anymore according to you after being the best African side in the WC

This is CE

Oh boy, come see logic

Algeria leading 1 - 0 nil and parking the bus = The best African side well organized and looking comfortable.

Algeria losing 1-2 = The question remains if they interested in winning the game.

No they came to practice curb and parallel parking


Gotta love CE....

[Guv007]

Who said you cannot tow a parked bus out of the way?

Sometimes and not all the times.

[Cellular]

read what i wrote again. the only good attempts naija had against iran came from crosses. that ameobi had that chance only supports the fact that our best chance to score was not going to come from passing the ball sideways back and forth, then booting the ball forward to people who are making wrong and mistimed runs.
I've never said we are/were clueless on anything. i'm just saying that those who want to claim that nigeria could not have done MUCH MUCH better in that game in tactics, formation, playing, and coaching are lying to themselves.

What tactical change would you have done?

The change that Belgium did was in personnel. We did that... our headers did not turn into goals theirs did...

When the scored, Algeria came out and were exposed.

We made two offensive subs and both subs had an impact... we couldn't make a third because we already used it on an injury sub. At the end it was down to execution of tactics... not on lack of one.

Yes, we could have done a lot better but we can't change our entire front line and midfield?

oga cellular, we didn't need to change our entire team. the way naija played reminded me of the eyesore from eguavoen's coaching days. nigeria is not england, and will never be. long balls are not useless, but they are not a go to solution for breaking down any defense at this level. the tactics discussion is a long one. not sure i want to even get into it. i know how debates on this forum go.
when nigeria saw that we were not breaking through, the first thing to try to do is to try to draw them out. you can draw teams out by teasing them either with space, or with the ball. they teased with the ball, but iran adjusted after the first ten minutes by refusing to bite. at that point, you have to start to work the ball upfield slowly by playing upfield passes and returns into the gap within the bus. belgium did that well today. another thing you have to do is put in 2 top strikers ON TIME, while leaving your creative players in, because you can confuse the defenders, and with time, they will give up something. but nigeria took moses out. moses was the only creative threat, and the only one that could put in decent crosses. another thing is, as the coach, you have to absolutely enforce positional discipline on the strikers, because an organized defense will just eat poorly positioned strikers like m&ms.
in addition, like i mentioned in another post, there is no team in this world that is tactically disciplined enough at the world cup level to maintain the bus when they see space in front of them. not for 90 minutes. the counter for belgium came when algeria thought they had some space they could run into to get a second goal. that is the other way you draw them out. you leave gaps behind you (but in front of the defense) on purpose, knowing that players will try to run there. more players behind you means less in front of you. mourinho did it a few times last season. its a gamble, but it can work if everyone understands that that is the objective. but nigeria kept players behind the ball even when we had it in midfield. that's good for defense, but thats just a stalemate because both teams now are just not moving at all, waiting for something to happen. and then they weren't even mobile enough or courageous enough to try forward passes. and when they did try, it was usually to the wrong person. anyway this is enough for now.

On the highlighted points...

We introduced Ameobi to get unto those long balls and speculative crosses... he did it. Moses was as bad as Musa but he did not offer the same workrate as Musa in that game. He was not returning enough nor was he able to take his man on... I would have left Moses even if it is for his corner kicks... but he did not do himself any benefit with his display.

Lastly, we had to retain our defenders behind the ball because Keshi knew that Carlos Queiroz was hoping on catching us on the counter on us abandoning our posts and attack with reckless abandon.

The cautious side of Keshi won out...

[Heliopolis]

So Africa has 1 win out of 5 so far. How long before people here admit even 5 WC spots is too generous for CAF?

[ohsee]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

[Chief Ogbunigwe]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

Nice post Oga. Please enjoy yourself.

Ogbuefi Cellular na extra-patriotic gentleman. His vexation with anything Naija no dey last pass 5 min.

[The YeyeMan]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

Nice post, good to hear you're having a good time and thank you for explaining the situation to Uncle Cellular who is working tirelessly and going from thread to thread putting out fires in attempts to say Nigeria didn't do too badly.

The performance was just embarrassing and the Nigeria team has become a bit of a laughing stock. If dey no fit qualify I won't wear my Nigerian jerseys when I land in Brazil. I go cover them well well, I don't want to be the butt of any jokes.

[Orion]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

Ohsee thanks. With the way some folks were going on here I was beginning to wonder if it was just me that saw a different game. This place is turning into a mad house with some folks totally abandoning reality and living in some kind of alternative universe.

[Cellular]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

My Great Prof.,

I missed the first game. I suppose dey Brazil but work and visa issues (I pulled an Ejike)...

Yes, we played badly...

It was one of those games you wanted to do a do-over... It was beyond tactics... When you dey stadium you might not see it as well as those way watch am on TV...

These guys did a good job of never allowing us to get into any rhythm... it did not help when players decided to want to do it all by themselves... they lost belief in whatever system or tactics they had... even the Iranian coach Carlos Queiroz pointed out in his press conference that once they were able to frustrate the Naijarians, the game became easier for them because they reduced the game to individual play where the Naijarian stars tried to do more than they are capable of...

It did not help that most of the players were off their game as well...

Prof., the only good thing about the game is that we got a point.

The strength of the Team is in the whole not the parts... and when the parts start thinking they are better than the whole, they will be found out.

[Cellular]

Ogbuefi Cellular.
You are taking this patriotism thing too far, and losing credibility as a result. While I too am full of what seems like a naively false hope that Keshi and the boys will perform serious juju on Saturday, yesterday's play makes such a hope seem like the forlorn hope of the chicken that it will suddenly sprout feathers and soar gloriously into the sky after it has been plucked and tossed into the boiling pot. In other words, things don't look very good.

I don't know if my guys brigadoon, analyzer and soloweizer have already told the story, but before the game, we went to the Radisson Hotel where the boys were staying in Curitiba, and let me tell you, as the boys boarded the bus, the citizens of Curitiba, particularly the female sort, were showing the boys some serious love, shrieking with joy anytime the likes of Mikel and Osaze showed face or went to the barriers to sign autos (Kanu, who was there, did most of the signing, and the women and even kids were ecstatic). I remarked to analyzer that soccer is truly a global game if these chiquitas sabi our guys like that, and he replied that they still remember Kanu from 1976.

We took leggedes to go to the stadium, and if I was surprised at the hotel love which I tried to explain away as groupie-ism, I was completely blown away at the support of the citizenry of Curitiba, who appeared to have adopted the Eagles. "Neezheria, Neezheria, Neezheria" spontaneously erupted every few steps; the stadium, which looked full, roared its approval when the Eagles came out to practice, and in the first half, the "Neezheria" chant broke out anytime our boys touched the ball.

It was a fuuking home game for us, at least in that first half.

But all that changed in the second half when it became clear that the absolute shyte we were seeing was not a case of nerves. Slowly but surely the Brazilian crowd started to boo. "Nna, we no sabi play," I texted my Rondon based brother. "U no lie," he replied. Those terse wise words of pidgin speak more truth than a thousand pretentious cover up tactical discussions.

The point of this story is that we were embarrassingly bad, and no amount of sterile tactical talk will hide this.

I woke up way too early this morning to catch a flight to Belo Horizonte at 6.30 am, walked up and down some serious hills to get to the stadium, and then walked up some serious flights of steps to get to where this useless FIFA people had put me, THREE ROWS FROM THE TOP in nosebleed territory even though I had paid for CAT 1 tickets and expected to be in row 9, not row 20,000! Sepp Blatter you don die be dat, you dey find ohsee trouble, you go see!

Anyway, the point again is that I found all of this to be worth it, BECAUSE IT WAS A CRACKER OF A GAME!!! Algerians have no reason to be ashamed, they frightened the pants of the vaunted Belgians, and made them work hard for their victory. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was happy to be there, and will talk about it to my grandchildren! It's not all about tactics folks.

Ohsee thanks. With the way some folks were going on here I was beginning to wonder if it was just me that saw a different game. This place is turning into a mad house with some folks totally abandoning reality and living in some kind of alternative universe.

Nna, you should take your own advice...

Praising a team in the first half like game is over in the first half. Or being happy with the display in a loss...

You should take Carlos Queiroz advice, "the role of the happy loser should be played by another team...not his team".

That is a coach that gets it...

We should aim to improve every game...

[Coach]

Belgium, no fullbacks but insisting upon a back four, effectively wasting one if not two players for precious little gain. Hopefully they'll be clobbered sooner rather than later. Golden generation maybe, but what good is gold without bravery and daring? Would be good to see them out cold, unconscious. Having done nothing for years to be called heirs apparent is ridiculous, ridiculously talented squad no doubt. They should go far, only to come a cropper vs Iran.