NIGERIA 0 V 1 GERMANY GAME THREAD

[hestonap]

That was a game when the coach should have gone for broke and brought in the game changers on the bench, at least in the 80th minute when the Germans were tiring out was the best time, what did he do, brought in a defensive midfielder, ohh m days, talk about the illiteracy of Nigerian coaches

Marko - do you want to summarise the stereotypical Nigerian performance again...summarised by always doing the same thing and expecting to get a different result even when its not clearly working...

- do the long pass..even it does not work....atempt to kick it higher and further and hope for the best

- remember to always lose the ball to the opponent on a regular and consistent basis

- take your time to settle into a game, afterall the first 10 to 15 minutes are not really part of the game...its only for warming up

- throw-ins are an opportunity to pass the ball to your opponent.

- keep trying to thread that 0.5um of a pass when the simpler option will do

- it's not chess so why concentrate....

- our old favourite of defending against set pieces is a complete waste of time...lets just get on with the playing

- oh every free kick or set piece opportunity we have is more likely a chance to reduce the population of beds or to try to injure the opponent by taking out his balls or damaging his chest...the opponents wall is the target..not that space between the wall and the net

- expect the unexpected...even when it is obvious that what you are hoping to happen on the day has really never happened before

you don scout us finish!

we compare notes
1- the quality opposition is more than likely to score within the first 5 minutes if not less at kickoff, seen this happen too many times, our players are still warming up when the opposing team strikes the killer blow
2- The goal keeper never screams at the defence, they are either too timid or expects the defenders to do their job
3- In an event that Nigeria takes the lead, they over celebrate and by the time they have calmed down, the oppostion has put another one past us, seen this too many times
4- The defenders leave too many glaring open spaces for the opposition to exploit, sometimes you see the opposing team getting a few one on one chances with the keeper
5- at the stroke of half time, Nigerian teams are vulnerable to another goal scored by the opposing side
6- The average Nigerian team cannot concentrate for 90 minutes
7- There is an over reliance of individual talent to make up for the short comings of shoody preparation
8- Opposing players who have no business scoring in a football match usually scores against Nigeria, example defenders, Spanish full back Alba scoring within 3 minutes at the confederation cup, or Heinz, Argentine defender scoring within 5 minutes at the world cup in 2010
9- as we have mentioned 1000 times, a corner kick or freekick is as good as a penalty for the opposition
10- since 1994 Nigerian teams have always lost by the case of bad defending or a temporary lapse in concentration, recent example when France beat Nigeria 2 nil, that game was going into extra time until Enyeama gifted France an opener

Nothing more to add beyond the following - if an striker opposition striker has had a dry run of goals...he is almost certainly likely to break his duck against Nigeria or you can guarantee that a pub team will give us a run for our money when they have no business doing so....hence a Tahiti will break their duck against us and for spells in a game will make us appear clueless and even go on to score a corner kick against us....

- there is a certain 'arrogance' to our play/way of doing things that makes us believe that 'we will play our own game and why worry about the opposition'.....for it is a stance that we adopt to hide a fundamental flaw of a poor work ethic, lack of attention to details and being simple lazy...we consistently refuse to do our home work and act surprised and angry when found out..

If you look at Nigerian football and look at the Nigerian government, you cannot separate the 2, every failing in the government, you will see it in their football!!

The good Lord keep and bless you.

I have always stressed this....our football is a micrcosm and a reflection of us a people and how we do things.

It is a basic principle...if you don't plan for success....you will fail big time and no amount of prayer or knocking your head on the floor will save your green jersey wearing #$%.

I know this is a football forum ..but I will sy it all the same....

You have a new President who was elected more than 6-weeks ago...a President of a nation of more than 180 million people...elected 6-weeks ago, in office more than a couple of weeks.....knew he was running for office more than a year ago...he is yet to present the list of his ministerial nominees to Nigerians....

Does it not tell you what we need to know about a person or people who do not plan for success......they end up being reactive most of the time rather than proactive.

[ohsee]

No surprises here.

The weaknesses were apparent during the AYC - from the silly and typical Nigerian penchant for turning over the ball and lack of intelligence in off the ball movement and positioning, to the rather dodgy defence and the good old police ball....these were apparent....we got away with it because we faced inferior opposition that could and would not capitalise on this.

I remember saying this that we would be found out if we did not fix what were glaring deficiencies while some were getting carried away with names.

This was a typically i am sorry to say un-intelligent Nigerian performance.

Thanks Manu - over to the NFF, send him on a training or attachment or something, send him back to the U-17s or whatever, get him to file in a technical report.

By the way a major condition before offering any coach a contract is ensuring that they file in a technical report of how their teams fared and what were their areas of shortcomings after every major competition or qualifying series....failure to do that should result in them never getting offered a contract again in the future.
These guys have to show that they learn and are learning on the job otherwise they should never be offered contracts.

Anyway back to the Womens WC, lets hope they fix their obvious deficiencies otherwise their performance against Sweden will be the highlight of their tourney.

Good luck to the girls.

Thank you my friend. Love your comments.

[green4life]

No matter what we put out the german were going to win. They were simply better.

So why bother?

Speechless.

[Gotti]

Too many funny people on CE. If Manu had started that match with 4-2-4 featuring Kele, Success, Yahaya (who is even smaller than the players who featured for us}, we would have been severely slaughtered. The Germans were better today. It was like watching Bayern Munich against errm, Olympiakos or Deportivo La Coruna. Live with it.

Any team that wins is "better" on the day....
But that does not address our ineptitude on the day.

[marko]

That was a game when the coach should have gone for broke and brought in the game changers on the bench, at least in the 80th minute when the Germans were tiring out was the best time, what did he do, brought in a defensive midfielder, ohh m days, talk about the illiteracy of Nigerian coaches

Marko - do you want to summarise the stereotypical Nigerian performance again...summarised by always doing the same thing and expecting to get a different result even when its not clearly working...

- do the long pass..even it does not work....atempt to kick it higher and further and hope for the best

- remember to always lose the ball to the opponent on a regular and consistent basis

- take your time to settle into a game, afterall the first 10 to 15 minutes are not really part of the game...its only for warming up

- throw-ins are an opportunity to pass the ball to your opponent.

- keep trying to thread that 0.5um of a pass when the simpler option will do

- it's not chess so why concentrate....

- our old favourite of defending against set pieces is a complete waste of time...lets just get on with the playing

- oh every free kick or set piece opportunity we have is more likely a chance to reduce the population of beds or to try to injure the opponent by taking out his balls or damaging his chest...the opponents wall is the target..not that space between the wall and the net

- expect the unexpected...even when it is obvious that what you are hoping to happen on the day has really never happened before

you don scout us finish!

Uncle, Na lie I talk?

Until we as Nigerians understand a very somple concept....success and failure are built on fundamental principles.

No system that works comes about by accident but by constantly fine tuning and leaerning from past errors both personal and from others.

You cant keep doing the same thing over and over again and act surprised or angry or just rationalise bette luck next time when $#% blows in your face.

From UPN to NRC to PDP to SDP to APC to IBB to OBJ to GEJ to PMB ...then you act surprised and angry when things dont work?

There surely is a God in heaven, because if na me be God, anytime i see those clowns forming their green ring with their designated aladura in the middle calling my name...i'll be raining sulphur and lightning to disperse their lazy, unintelligent and knwledge hating' asses from my sight...

Nonsense.

Look at the Captain, we saw him give very nice crosses at the under 17 tournament, did he go back and improve from his dead balls?? did he stay after training to perfect his dead ball skill?? the answer will be a huge emphatic no!! we would have seen this improvement today, just like when we see Mikel trying to take a free kick for the super eagles, does he take dead balls at Chelsea?? what gives him the right to strut over to the ball and try to do something he clearly has no capabilities to execute, you are trying something you know that it will certainly end up in failure but you hope, the Germans meanwhile came with a game plan, don't allow Nigeria to settle into the game, when you lose the ball, chase them because these players lack the intelligence to hold on to the ball longer than 4 seconds, thats how the Germans scored from a poor attempt at the midfielder trying to dribble 2-3 players maybe for scouts entertainment value, before you know it, bang, the ball is behind the net and Nigeria simply did not have anything to offer except pathetic long balls west ham style and pathetic attempts at dead ball delivery from the captain!!

[green4life]

We only had 39% possession? Kai. Suffer head.

[Goldleaf]

Too many funny people on CE. If Manu had started that match with 4-2-4 featuring Kele, Success, Yahaya (who is even smaller than the players who featured for us}, we would have been severely slaughtered. The Germans were better today. It was like watching Bayern Munich against errm, Olympiakos or Deportivo La Coruna. Live with it.

Any team that wins is "better" on the day....
But that does not address our ineptitude on the day.

Haba!

I am so very sure that you have watched matches where the better team on the day lost, unless you want to equate the term "better" to the result only.

[theYemster]

The Germans were better but still can't wrap my head around three things.

The unforced turnovers (errors)?
The hoofing the ball forward against taller agile defenders...they tried that same $%^& against Brazil?
The substitution pattern and not using all your subs?

At least put up a fight...

Anybody who references the scoreline as evidence that it was close or a good game is a nutter or did not watch the game.

I'm having a hard time understanding that myself. Even when they get to the edge of the box rather than try a shot they elect to pass wide for obviously a cross which gets sucked into the vortex in the Germany defense.

The problem with most Nigerian teams is that they only know how to play one way. They are rarely dynamic. If it works out they look very good, if it doesn't they don't have a backup option. And that's that happened today. Our plan A didn't work.

I doubt there was anything Nacho and Simon could've done. He knows this kids better than we and for much longer. He probably even discovered them do imma defer to his judgment. There's enough blame to go round but this is about conducting a critical analysis rather than just scapegoating. The coach messed up but he needs organizational and structural support not the sack. He's won more games than not, competed in three tourneys, win two and lost one on pks in the final. This is only his second competitive loss in like three years ago he's not as clueless as many here claim he is.

[Cristao II]

So the question is when are we going to properly invest in development?

[fabio]

So the question is when are we going to properly invest in development?

Invest in what? Please!

[Enugu II]

Bro Celly, the unforced errors were routine during the AYC but we we're much better than the opposition in overall retention of possession plus they couldn't punish our errors during that AYC. Also, the long ball tactics led to at least three or more 'easy' goals for Awoniyi during that AYC. So those bad habits weren't addressed. The sloppy passing in front of our box during the AYC was a norm. I chalked it down to overconfidence then but it's obvious that it's straight up bad habits that went uncorrected.

I chalked it up to the poor pitch in Senegal...

At the AYC the ball over the top was very effective as a quick hitting change of pace (and btw it often came from Mathew, who IMHO is a much better passer than Sokari), but we should have been able to switch our tactics for different circumstances.

Gotti,

Go back to comments when we played in the Afeican U17, these comments about turnovers were there. It is part of this team. It isn't just this game. One thing we should acknowledge is we met for the first time a team that was thoroughly better than us.

[marko]

Invest in the Nigerian league for starters, pump millions to produce bonfire footballers, don't allow the under 16s to play in Europe, let local teams sign them up to develop their game, so many of these players get lost in the European sojourn, they have to often compete with European players with better footballing brains and most don't make the cut, the solution is right there but it will take a lot of commitment from the sporting authorities and private investors plus the government to raise the domestic game to anything you see in South America, if some players cant make it in Europe, let them go back and play in the local league, let all them Nigerian Billionaires invest in the local side and pay salaries on par with Europe if not less, then we will start seeing gains in Nigeria football fortunes, till now we are only scratching the surface Nigerian fire brigade style!!

[Coach]

So the question is when are we going to properly invest in development?

Absolutely, common denominator across all levels. There is no footballing culture nor curriculum in any aspect of our system. How can one expect to learn when the infrastructure for learning remains in absentia. What has been learned from any of our recent ventures? What strategy or plan has been effected following root cause analysis? Are the problems detailed above not similar to those spoken last summer? Till there is a cultural movement Nigeria will continue its plateau or perhaps, plummet. Germany overhauled their preexisting structure and the produce?

Till Nigeria escape from the kickabout happy to be here mentality, they're going nowhere other than home at the appropriate time for their lack of preparation. Another tournament another for technical reports, training, coaching and various other basic, staple diets for all serious footballing nations. Backward ever, forward never.

[marko]

we saw this already with the Super falcons who comeback due to sheer individual talent but this type of football will never win all the time, we all complain but at the same time, we should offer solutions to the issue, i have already offered mine, it will cost a lot of money though, not for the faint hearted but Nigeria claims to love football right, so it should be a non starter, basic footballing skills should be taught from the play ground, under 10s, under 13s, under 15s, by the time they are 16, they have a headstart to match their skill level

[Damunk]

The Germans were better but still can't wrap my head around three things.

The unforced turnovers (errors)?
The hoofing the ball forward against taller agile defenders...they tried that same $%^& against Brazil?
The substitution pattern and not using all your subs?

At least put up a fight...

Anybody who references the scoreline as evidence that it was close or a good game is a nutter or did not watch the game.

I'm having a hard time understanding that myself. Even when they get to the edge of the box rather than try a shot they elect to pass wide for obviously a cross which gets sucked into the vortex in the Germany defense.

The problem with most Nigerian teams is that they only know how to play one way. They are rarely dynamic. If it works out they look very good, if it doesn't they don't have a backup option. And that's that happened today. Our plan A didn't work.

I doubt there was anything Nacho and Simon could've done. He knows this kids better than we and for much longer. He probably even discovered them do imma defer to his judgment. There's enough blame to go round but this is about conducting a critical analysis rather than just scapegoating. The coach messed up but he needs organizational and structural support not the sack. He's won more games than not, competed in three tourneys, win two and lost one on pks in the final. This is only his second competitive loss in like three years ago he's not as clueless as many here claim he is.

Voice of reason.

It seems once we lose a game, it is due to our 'stupidity', 'clueless coaches' and general 'lack of IQ'.
It is never about the opposition being better and more experienced. Being a more experienced player or team doesn't make the victims 'stupid' or 'clueless'. That German team is waaaaaay more experienced than our boys. Fisrt, they are the 'oldest' team in the tournament and ours is the youngest. At this level, even one year difference can go a looooong way. Now people can appreciate the difference between playing at youth level and top flight. Apparently, and according to the Eurosport commentator, the German starting eleven already had £30m worth of professional player contracts between them. Half of our team are still playing academy football.

What we Nigerians will do next is easy to see. Make the standard emotional knee-jerk judgements, discard the players and coach to the 'clueless' bin and expect for things to change next time. If there is cluelessness to be found anywhere, it is amongst our fans.

I said it before the tournament...and this is the all-so-predictable reaction we are seeing.

[theYemster]

Fegwu abeg stop it. Musa that can't cross a frickin letter "t" if his life depended on it. Those German kids were better technically than the Nigerian kids. Some of the Naij players are more skilful but technically lacking compared to the Germans.

How many did Akpoguma cross well?

How many scoring opportunities did he create?

PS. Talking about crossing, how many good crosses and corner kicks did the Germans pull off correctly?

For all the good Germany showed they were deficient in a number of basic technical areas. They are not all that on all phases of the game/team.

He didn't have as many opportunities as Musa did. Musa took almost all our set pieces including all the dangerous free kicks just outside the box. Each was incrementally worse than the previous one. I really doubt he practices them at least outside of whatever they do in regular training. Having boundless energy to run around the place is nice but isn't enough to put him above the German captain...definitely not on the basis of today's game.

[Mr. Piffington]

We like to blame the coaches but the players are culpable as well. Our players are too individualistic and do not play for a common goal.sometimes it is subtle ( with the likes of Awoniyi). It starts from attitude off the pitch and manifests in play on the pitch. The Germans were a far superior team to us in terms of tactics and even technical play. Once they scored and it was halftime you could see they had a plan to slow the game down any which way and they succeeded- we had no answers. We do well at under 17 because we have the individual skills which works at that level. As you go up in football- things like technique, positioning, tactics, movement and concentration matter more and then we no longer are able to cope. The Super Eagles of the 90s had some of the same traits only that they were better technical players and also played more as a unit

I didn't watch the game but this view pretty much lines up with how I see Nigeria/African teams play. The skill and the athleticism is there but somehow the brains just don't match it. When you see Europeans/South Americans play you see them know when to use both brilliantly. My grandmother loves watching football and even she notices this.

[Damunk]

Bro Celly, the unforced errors were routine during the AYC but we we're much better than the opposition in overall retention of possession plus they couldn't punish our errors during that AYC. Also, the long ball tactics led to at least three or more 'easy' goals for Awoniyi during that AYC. So those bad habits weren't addressed. The sloppy passing in front of our box during the AYC was a norm. I chalked it down to overconfidence then but it's obvious that it's straight up bad habits that went uncorrected.

I chalked it up to the poor pitch in Senegal...

At the AYC the ball over the top was very effective as a quick hitting change of pace (and btw it often came from Mathew, who IMHO is a much better passer than Sokari), but we should have been able to switch our tactics for different circumstances.

Gotti,

Go back to comments when we played in the Afeican U17, these comments about turnovers were there. It is part of this team. It isn't just this game. One thing we should acknowledge is we met for the first time a team that was thoroughly better than us.

Simple.
Can't understand why it is so difficult to fathom. Maybe because we believe we have a Right To Win?

[Damunk]

We like to blame the coaches but the players are culpable as well. Our players are too individualistic and do not play for a common goal.sometimes it is subtle ( with the likes of Awoniyi). It starts from attitude off the pitch and manifests in play on the pitch. The Germans were a far superior team to us in terms of tactics and even technical play. Once they scored and it was halftime you could see they had a plan to slow the game down any which way and they succeeded- we had no answers. We do well at under 17 because we have the individual skills which works at that level. As you go up in football- things like technique, positioning, tactics, movement and concentration matter more and then we no longer are able to cope. The Super Eagles of the 90s had some of the same traits only that they were better technical players and also played more as a unit

I didn't watch the game but this view pretty much lines up with how I see Nigeria/African teams play. The skill and the athleticism is there but somehow the brains just don't match it. When you see Europeans/South Americans play you see them know when to use both brilliantly. My grandmother loves watching football and even she notices this.

Sorry Piff, this is just too lazy and predictable a diagnosis.

When we humiliate other teams on the pitch, we do not ascribe it to 'superior' football intellect. We do not call the opposition 'brainless'. But the moment we fail (this time to a superior and far more experienced team), we jump to self-diagnose a 'lack of IQ'. Making a stray pass, not tracking your man, or simply taking the wrong option is not about one's 'brains' or intelligence or else the footballing world would be populated by athletic Professors of Football with PhDs.

Sorry, this is just buying into the racist stereotype. I cant believe you see it only one way. When you don't get picked at a job interview, do you immediately put it down to your 'low IQ'?

Maybe we should put all the 24 teams to an IQ test and see whether we indeed come out bottom.

[Mr. Piffington]

The Germans were better but still can't wrap my head around three things.

The unforced turnovers (errors)?
The hoofing the ball forward against taller agile defenders...they tried that same $%^& against Brazil?
The substitution pattern and not using all your subs?

At least put up a fight...

Anybody who references the scoreline as evidence that it was close or a good game is a nutter or did not watch the game.

I'm having a hard time understanding that myself. Even when they get to the edge of the box rather than try a shot they elect to pass wide for obviously a cross which gets sucked into the vortex in the Germany defense.

The problem with most Nigerian teams is that they only know how to play one way. They are rarely dynamic. If it works out they look very good, if it doesn't they don't have a backup option. And that's that happened today. Our plan A didn't work.

I doubt there was anything Nacho and Simon could've done. He knows this kids better than we and for much longer. He probably even discovered them do imma defer to his judgment. There's enough blame to go round but this is about conducting a critical analysis rather than just scapegoating. The coach messed up but he needs organizational and structural support not the sack. He's won more games than not, competed in three tourneys, win two and lost one on pks in the final. This is only his second competitive loss in like three years ago he's not as clueless as many here claim he is.

Voice of reason.

It seems once we lose a game, it is due to our 'stupidity', 'clueless coaches' and general 'lack of IQ'.
It is never about the opposition being better and more experienced. Being a more experienced player or team doesn't make the victims 'stupid' or 'clueless'. That German team is waaaaaay more experienced than our boys. Fisrt, they are the 'oldest' team in the tournament and ours is the youngest. At this level, even one year difference can go a looooong way. Now people can appreciate the difference between playing at youth level and top flight. Apparently, and according to the Eurosport commentator, the German starting eleven already had £30m worth of professional player contracts between them. Half of our team are still playing academy football.

What we Nigerians will do next is easy to see. Make the standard emotional knee-jerk judgements, discard the players and coach to the 'clueless' bin and expect for things to change next time. If there is cluelessness to be found anywhere, it is amongst our fans.

I said it before the tournament...and this is the all-so-predictable reaction we are seeing.

Oga Damunk,

There are times when you watch two evenly matched teams play and one wins you get the feeling that they weren't superior to the other team, they were just better that day, they got their tactics spot on. There are times when you watch games when two teams are supposed to be at the same level and the one team could have won but were playing far below their potential and the other team is superior tactically. For the most part every time I watch an African giant play a European/South American giant the feeling I get tends to be the latter.

Look at the women's game against Sweden, there isn't any football fan that will watch that game and tell you the Nigerians weren't better and could have easily won but let themselves down by disorganization, some of us just keep getting that feeling with African teams; potential exists but just can't get past a playground level of organization. Even our much loved 90's era SE were the same way to a degree.

[marutimon]

They are rarely dynamic. If it works out they look very good, if it doesn't they don't have a backup option. And that's that happened today. Our plan A didn't work.

I doubt there was anything Nacho and Simon could've done.

Wrong. They have dynamic movement, they know how to interplay, get into position, have the vision to play a ball and the skill to match it. With them in the frame its a whole other attacking game.

Simon for one would skin his opposing defender more than once. He does struggle with the final ball, but at the very minimum he would introduce some chaos in the defence of Germany.

Spilt milk. I know this team could have done better. They didn't.

[marutimon]

Apparently, and according to the Eurosport commentator, the German starting eleven already had £30m worth of professional player contracts between them. Half of our team are still playing academy football.

So why is Moses Simon, valued at 20 mln EUR by his coach, benchwarming?

[marutimon]

We like to blame the coaches but the players are culpable as well. Our players are too individualistic and do not play for a common goal.sometimes it is subtle ( with the likes of Awoniyi). It starts from attitude off the pitch and manifests in play on the pitch. The Germans were a far superior team to us in terms of tactics and even technical play. Once they scored and it was halftime you could see they had a plan to slow the game down any which way and they succeeded- we had no answers. We do well at under 17 because we have the individual skills which works at that level. As you go up in football- things like technique, positioning, tactics, movement and concentration matter more and then we no longer are able to cope. The Super Eagles of the 90s had some of the same traits only that they were better technical players and also played more as a unit

I didn't watch the game but this view pretty much lines up with how I see Nigeria/African teams play. The skill and the athleticism is there but somehow the brains just don't match it. When you see Europeans/South Americans play you see them know when to use both brilliantly. My grandmother loves watching football and even she notices this.

Players like Iheanacho, Nwakali, Yahaya, Success have those brains. They weren't however allowed to play...