World Cup 2018: Super Eagles On The March Again, Take on Croatia Today

Super Eagles of Nigeria

June 16, 2018//-The 2018 World Cup fever is on. The world football fraternity is glued to Russia, host of the ongoing tournament. And good for Nigeria, Super Eagles are one of the 32 teams vying for honours.

The Super Eagles are opening their group campaign with another tactical discipline side-Croatia today .

This is the country’s sixth appearance at the biggest football festival. Her maiden appearance was in 1994 in USA, where the team dazzled the world. The Super Eagles were not left out of the next edition in France and also in Japan/Korea in 2002.

It was in 2006 that the country failed to qualify and the reverberations that followed ended Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima hopes of returning to the Glass House. Nigerians never forgave him for superintending such a failure. Four years later in South Africa Nigeria qualified and so also the 2014 edition in Brazil.

But in all her previous five appearances, the team crossed the group stage thrice-1994, 1998, 2014-and crashed out at the group stages in 2002 and 2010. But Nigeria has never crossed the second round hurdle.

Now in Russia, the team is on the march again; hoping to at least reach the quarterfinal for the first time, though, Amaju Pinnick, President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has set a semifinal target.

In truth, failure not to have gone past the second round has been due more to indiscipline than lack of talents or absence of a quality team. In 1994, after qualifying for the knockout stage, the players lost focus, the team was divided.

Topping the group had made them feel too big. Coach Clemence Westerhof lost control of the team. NFF officials aligned with the players since they wanted the coach out. Westerhof tried to relocate the team to another hotel but met a brick wall as NFF officials were not impressed. Result, a 2-1 loss to Italy.

In France 1998, after qualifying for the second round, rather than concentrate on their game against Denmark, the players’ focus was on the quarterfinal game against Brazil, believing that Denmark was a pushover. On the eve of the Denmark game, the players were busy sharing money until the wee hours of the match day.

Result, 4-1 bashing by Denmark.The team did not fare better at the 2014 edition as players’ boycotted a training session, protesting over unpaid allowances and winning bonuses. On the eve of their second round match against France the players were busy counting and sharing money from morning till late in the night. The outcome was a 2-0 loss to France.

But here we are at the 2018 edition in Russia, what hope for the Super Eagles as they start their campaign today? The NFF in its bid to avoid a repeat of mistakes of the past has resolved issues bordering on players’ welfare, with the players. Quality friendlies aimed at putting the team in good stead for the World Cup were organised. The team played six friendly games-won two, drew one and lost three.

Not a good performance at all. However, friendlies are not meant to be won, but to expose the team’s weaknesses with the view to correcting them before the tournament.

However, the results of the friendly games do not offer much hope against the backdrop of the team’s group opponents-Croatia, Iceland and Argentina. After the friendly against England, with nine days to the World Cup, Gernot Rohr confirmed that the team was not ready yet.

Honestly, my fears are not because of the losses but the way and manner the losses came about. The team does not play together as a unit. To me, the players are interested more in playing to the gallery. It is like they are interested in individual glory.

It is like every player want to be seen as the one who was the man of the match. Players are not playing for the team, they don’t fall back to help in defence. When a player loses the ball, the next player helps in recovering the ball, but this is not the case. A situation where some players stand hand akimbo when the team is under pressure will hurt the team seriously.

Also the team does not seem to have a particular formation. It swings from one formation to the other. The implication of this is that confusion may set in as players may not know their roles.

Johannes Bonfrere, former Super Eagles coach has this to say of the team, “Nigeria can come out of the group if the coaches agree on one formation and tell the players what is expected of each person. You can tell them ‘hey, you going to play like this and this,’ with your mouth but they have never done it before on a pitch and that’s very

different from teaching them on a board or even in training.

“A match situation is totally different. If you can stick to a system and let the players get the hang of it, then you have potentially one of the best team at the moment. You cannot play 4-4-2 today and 4-3-3 tomorrow and then next week 5-4-1. It’s not possible. A team going to the World Cup cannot do this,” he said.

Playing against a strong and tactical Croatia side and still trying out a new formation gives me goose pimples. But with Rohr saying on Thursday that the team is physically and mentally ready for Croatia means the last nine days have been used to work out all necessary modalities in the team. From 8.00 pm, we will know if Rohr has truly done the needful.

Independent.ng /African Eye Report

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