Please let's put this home based talk to bed now

[Tobi17]

I mean look no further than your best RB in the NPFL who got tossed around like a rag-doll by both the Ghanaian and Jamaican wingers, all the goals we conceded in this competition all came from Sodiq's side. He's a decent player to have around for CHAN tournaments but never should a player like that be anywhere near the NT. The home based project had a chance to prove its argument in a low pressure competition and yet failed again to deliver. Enough of it now.

[EMIR KONGI JAFFI JOFFA]

Truth be told, we might be witnessing the last generation of SE that are not FB or based. Nigeria has failed woefully under the Eguavoen led technical committee, it will take us a generation to recover. We wait for the likes of Onikan, Fabio and Cellular to admit the obvious.

[Damunk]

I mean look no further than your based RB in the NPFL who got tossed around like a rag-doll by both the Ghanaian and Jamaican wingers, all the goals we conceded in this competition all came from Sodiq's side. He's a decent player to have around for CHAN tournaments but never should a player like that be anywhere near the NT. The home based project had a chance to prove its argument in a low pressure competition and yet failed again to deliver. Enough of it now.

I think the argument is not in the poor performance of Sodiq (anyone can have a bad game or even a bad run of games), but in the transformation of Benjamin Fredericks.
We talk about a footballer’s ‘education’ and we think say na beans.

Fredericks hasn’t even broken into the full senior side at his club yet, but the difference is clear.
It may be early days. He might even be an exceptional one-off case. But the way the local player evangelists dismiss the less-obvious shortcomings of our local league, e.g. their poor football education (both on and off the pitch) is both baffling and tiring.

There’s a reason foreign scouts are creaming off our young talent rather than our NPFL ‘stars’. It’s because they are malleable. The last NPFL star that got transferred directly abroad, made it big and came back to positively impact the Super Eagles was a very young Ahmed Musa all those years ago.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but even if so, how many are they?

I liken it to driving for years in Nigeria and then coming to do a UK driving test after some ‘refresher’ driving lessons here. You fail it once, twice, three times and you wonder why. After all you’ve been driving ‘for years’.
Meanwhile, someone else who has never driven before comes over, does the lessons and passes the test first time.
You are baffled, but there’s a reason.

I don’t blame the players. The whole system needs a total overhaul. Sodiq has not done himself any favours but he’s not a ‘bad’ footballer like that and I don’t blame him.
I blame all those that refuse to acknowledge the quality of the league a player plays in, the quality of opposition he plays with and against week after week, and the quality of sustained coaching he receives at his club over a period of time.

It’s a no brainer.
Welcome Benjamin Fredericks!

[fabio]

Sodiq had a bad game, so therefore all HB player are bad. Excellent!!!

[Orion]

You should be more worried that a simple square ball into our 18-yard box resulted in a goal THREE times in the competition. That's super worrying! In modern football, that's usually one of the easiest balls to defend.

[Bigpokey24]

This is a very daft thread. Samu lost the ball in a very dangerous area. The amount of hate towards home-based shouldn't cloud yalls judgements.

Stop all these silly pathetic rants . Your freaking issues should be how to elevate the NFF. Build a freaking footballing facility for all our national teams alas Morocco.L, England, France etc. Instead you short sighted Nigerians are concerned about surface distractions. We will be here again next year crying about players.

Everyone knows the fresh promising talents leave the league early. Don't we have any shame? What's wrong with using home-based players for friendlies etc . What's wrong with developing our league? Aren't you people ashamed SA has surpassed us in league football. We were away ahead of them.

Keep attacking local players because according to una they aren't good. As if all of una here weren't local before. Pathetic privileged hypocrites


Look at them. There was just one home-based player and we tied the mighty reggae boys with players from AC Milan. GETAFE, Rangers, Brentford, Werder Bremeh, Prague, Augsburg, Leicester, Leverkusen, Nantes and the mighty Chippa united..Not to talk of subs from Olympiakos, Seville. You people really "gets" no shame at all

Dummies with the opportunity to spill their lazy thoughts for all to read , thanks to social media. Every illegitimate prehistoric illiterate can now rant.

One player who i am not sure about is agu. Why are we playing another right footer as a left back? Dude used his right foot 99% of the time.

[Lolly]

Sodiq had a bad game, so therefore all HB player are bad. Excellent!!!

Nope. Sadiq was actually the best of the lot that showed up at the Unity Cup and he is not a bad player, he is just lacking pace and still very crude in his tackles. But he has a good football brain, ball control and distribution. But he can’t play at full back position at international level if you can’t stop crosses and can’t tackle.

The other 4 or so HB players just looked so average. Alimi is the worst player I have seen in the GWG (well minus that Kumba guy who played against Venezuela many years ago ). Papa Daniel was not bad, good engine but very poor awareness and control in tight spaces. I see why he can’t pass trials. The other two (Ugwueze and Onyebuchi) who came on against Ghana looked so raw in the very few minutes they were on the pitch especially the CB Onyebuchi. Only a mad man will select him above Frederick.

It is a known fact that those who are still in Nigeria playing NPFL are the ones who either haven’t gotten and or couldn’t get a foreign club to sign them. The scouts have been shipping out our best players for decades. So the quality of players that are left behind are not at the level of some of our foreign based stars. You can’t compare a player who trains, and plays week in week out in the top 5 league against high lev opponents to a player who plays in the NPFL. Oliseh said it and he was right.

[mcal]

...I know many were sitting on the edge of the seats, couches, or dem beds praying feverishly for one of the local home based player screw up so they can say, "I told you so"

[Lolly]

You should be more worried that a simple square ball into our 18-yard box resulted in a goal THREE times in the competition. That's super worrying! In modern football, that's usually one of the easiest balls to defend.

All from the same side of the pitch. And on each occasion, our central defenders have failed to block the crosses or stop the attackers from reaching the ball. If we play like this against Russia, we go chop more than 5 goals.

[airwolex]

You should be more worried that a simple square ball into our 18-yard box resulted in a goal THREE times in the competition. That's super worrying! In modern football, that's usually one of the easiest balls to defend.

All from the same side of the pitch. And on each occasion, our central defenders have failed to block the crosses or stop the attackers from reaching the ball. If we play like this against Russia, we go chop more than 5 goals.

He had a decent starting position for both goals. I think he knows himself he lacks pace and tries to compensate. Unfortunately for him, at this level, everyone is blistering and he just could not cope. Decent player and can deliver decent crosses but unfortunately that's not enough.

[Lolly]

You should be more worried that a simple square ball into our 18-yard box resulted in a goal THREE times in the competition. That's super worrying! In modern football, that's usually one of the easiest balls to defend.

All from the same side of the pitch. And on each occasion, our central defenders have failed to block the crosses or stop the attackers from reaching the ball. If we play like this against Russia, we go chop more than 5 goals.

He had a decent starting position for both goals. I think he knows himself he lacks pace and tries to compensate. Unfortunately for him, at this level, everyone is blistering and he just could not cope. Decent player and can deliver decent crosses but unfortunately that's not enough.

What about our central defenders? They messed up too especially the goal against Ghana and the 2nd goal against Jamaica. That why I favour playing 3 at the back. We don’t have a Baressi or Costacurta at the back. Our CDs are just okay, if we have to be really honest with ourselves.

[Babalawo]

You should be more worried that a simple square ball into our 18-yard box resulted in a goal THREE times in the competition. That's super worrying! In modern football, that's usually one of the easiest balls to defend.

Well said,
Sodiq didn’t play against Benin Republic and Zimbabwe, where we conceded the exact same type of goal.
We have a problem at the RB, we are leaking terribly and conceding lots of goals from there.

Whoever is in charge of drilling our defensive plays has a lot of work to do, so much ball watching and lack of positional awareness when the opponents attack us from the Right. I am also very convinced Nwabali has a general positioning weakness dealing with low crosses into his box.

Chelle needs to work on his defensive plays ASAP!

[vancity eagle]

Owngoal reporting that Chelle is adding 3 players to the Russia squad.

Isaac Savior
Ismail Sodiq
Alimi

I mean what the fock ?

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Sodiq despite his horror show makes it 3 rightbacks to our one leftback. Why not Agu ?

WTF is Alimi going to Russia to do ?

Savior wasn't even at the Unity Cup, and they just call up some other random homebased ?

Honestly WTF is wrong with the NFF, these reports better not be true.

[Tobi17]

Meanwhile Chelle has added 3 new players to the squad for the Russian friendly

Sikiru Alimi
Sodiq
Savior

[TonyTheTigerKiller]

I mean look no further than your based RB in the NPFL who got tossed around like a rag-doll by both the Ghanaian and Jamaican wingers, all the goals we conceded in this competition all came from Sodiq's side. He's a decent player to have around for CHAN tournaments but never should a player like that be anywhere near the NT. The home based project had a chance to prove its argument in a low pressure competition and yet failed again to deliver. Enough of it now.

I think the argument is not in the poor performance of Sodiq (anyone can have a bad game or even a bad run of games), but in the transformation of Benjamin Fredericks.
We talk about a footballer’s ‘education’ and we think say na beans.

Fredericks hasn’t even broken into the full senior side at his club yet, but the difference is clear.
It may be early days. He might even be an exceptional one-off case. But the way the local player evangelists dismiss the less-obvious shortcomings of our local league, e.g. their poor football education (both on and off the pitch) is both baffling and tiring.

There’s a reason foreign scouts are creaming off our young talent rather than our NPFL ‘stars’. It’s because they are malleable. The last NPFL star that got transferred directly abroad, made it big and came back to positively impact the Super Eagles was a very young Ahmed Musa all those years ago.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but even if so, how many are they?

I liken it to driving for years in Nigeria and then coming to do a UK driving test after some ‘refresher’ driving lessons here. You fail it once, twice, three times and you wonder why. After all you’ve been driving ‘for years’.
Meanwhile, someone else who has never driven before comes over, does the lessons and passes the test first time.
You are baffled, but there’s a reason.

I don’t blame the players. The whole system needs a total overhaul. Sodiq has not done himself any favours but he’s not a ‘bad’ footballer like that and I don’t blame him.
I blame all those that refuse to acknowledge the quality of the league a player plays in, the quality of opposition he plays with and against week after week, and the quality of sustained coaching he receives at his club over a period of time.

It’s a no brainer.
Welcome Benjamin Fredericks!

A subjective and somewhat dishonest analysis. You are merely interpreting facts in a manner that favors your pre existing narrative. The premise for your conclusion appears to be the rather dubious claim that all the goals came from Sodiq’s side. Well, no fullback in the world is capable of preventing every run down his flank or every single cross during the course of the game. The central defenders are there to prevent the opposing attackers from taking advantage of the crosses that do get through and they failed dismally on this occasion. You heap the blame on Sodiq for not preventing the crosses but you give the central defenders, including Benjamin, who allowed the spaces for strikes on goal a free pass. The obvious flaws in your argument are that Bruno Onyemaechi who plays in one of your vaunted European leagues, did not fare any better against the Ghanaian wingers. More importantly, our central defenders, all of whom play in Europe, were significantly more culpable in all the goals we conceded than Sodiq Ismail was. Moreover, like you said, it’s early days yet and neither you nor I can predict how Benjamin or Sodiq will pan out in the future, regardless of where they end up plying their trade. The glaring fact is that this experimental team failed to beat a team they should beat easily on paper.

The only takeaway of any import is that none of the newbies who were introduced in this round of friendlies is ready for a major role in the SuperEagles. You can take that to the bank


Cheers.

[Lolly]

Owngoal reporting that Chelle is adding 3 players to the Russia squad.

Isaac Savior
Ismail Sodiq
Alimi

I mean what the fock ?

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Sodiq despite his horror show makes it 3 rightbacks to our one leftback. Why not Agu ?

WTF is Alimi going to Russia to do ?

Savior wasn't even at the Unity Cup, and they just call up some other random homebased ?

Honestly WTF is wrong with the NFF, these reports better not be true.

Unless Alimi had stage fright against Ghana, this must be the most ridiculous decision to be taken by any coach in our history. The guy was shockingly poor. He obviously needs another promotional opportunity.

Saviour was in the original invitation list unless he missed his flight London.

[lacidi]

Chelle is clearly a scam. I don't know why no one wants to say this. Why are we pretending that this guy is okay? If it was a Nigerian coach all hell would have broken loose.

[highbury]

Truth be told, we might be witnessing the last generation of SE that are not FB or based. Nigeria has failed woefully under the Eguavoen led technical committee, it will take us a generation to recover. We wait for the likes of Onikan, Fabio and Cellular to admit the obvious.

Na lie! Stop masquerading your wish as fact. Yes, Sodiq didn't play well but to come up with that conclusion is wishful thinking.

[danfo driver]

I mean look no further than your best RB in the NPFL who got tossed around like a rag-doll by both the Ghanaian and Jamaican wingers, all the goals we conceded in this competition all came from Sodiq's side. He's a decent player to have around for CHAN tournaments but never should a player like that be anywhere near the NT. The home based project had a chance to prove its argument in a low pressure competition and yet failed again to deliver. Enough of it now.

I dont like what you guys are doing. I absolutely do not like it at all and its shocking!

You guys are trying to take food away from Uncle Cellular's mouth? Do you know how hard he worked to get that boy into this tournament in London? In front of scouts? Abeg make una dey try off una mic!

[aruako1]

Sodiq had a bad game, so therefore all HB player are bad. Excellent!!!

The logic is baffling.

[danfo driver]

I blame all those that refuse to acknowledge the quality of the league a player plays in, the quality of opposition he plays with and against week after week, and the quality of sustained coaching he receives at his club over a period of time.

hmmm

Seems everyone is finally coming around to what I have been saying for years! As usual, it takes CEs 4 years to catch up to my position.

You simply cannot compare the level of football in Div 2, 3, 4, retirement league, backwater and sh1t leagues to the top! This is why our players struggle at WCs and other major tournaments. They cant hack it! But our fans are deeply soaked with love for lower league and backwater players. No be curse be that?

[danfo driver]

Sodiq had a bad game, so therefore all HB player are bad. Excellent!!!

he didnt have a "bad game." If you watched the full game, he didnt have a "bad game." The issue is that his shortcomings were exposed in certain scenarios and that put the team in peril. He could have had a world class man of the match performance! Scored 10 goals and half 20 assists and made some crucial challenges. The issue here isnt about his performance in the whole game, which wasnt bad. The issue is that his lack of exposure and ability to compete at this level was exposed in critical situations.

This is the saddest part of this fanbase, most of you lack knowledge of the game, so you dont even know how to analyze things. That is why we have Div 2,3, retirement and sh1t league footballers in our squad and you guys twerk with your dirty yansh for them! Look at Ajayi?? A clubless player who as cut by a Div 2 team shows up to use our team to get a new club and most of you are silent. People like you even used the small money that you have to go and watch him live! TUEHH!!

[danfo driver]

..Not to talk of subs from Olympiakos, Seville. You people really "gets" no shame at all

Who is that? The Div 2 sh1t fat belly player that was kicked out of Sevilla and ended on the bench in Div 2?