The Super Eagles are away to Russia for a friendly match against their hosts on October 6. Before their departure to Moscow, they received the biggest shock from an African team under coach Eric Chelle. The Super Eagles lost 3-0 to lowly rated Guinea-Bissau in a 2027 AFCON qualifier.
Former Nigeria international and one-time assistant coach of the Super Eagles, Sylvanus Okpala, said the Super Eagles’ display against Guinea-Bissau was the worst he had witnessed in a long while.
In a chat with Sports Vanguard, Okpala said, “If they were tactical, at least, one would have seen a rugged defense line and some movement or signs of a match plan, and, perhaps, if passes were being disrupted or impeded, one would attribute that to the bad pitch. There was no bite, no defense, no strategy, nothing. I don’t think they had a match plan.”
Was it a technical problem? We asked Okpala.
Well, I wasn’t there to know if they did not listen to the coach’s instructions, but from what one saw, one could say the blame was partly the players’ and partly technical. These are big professional players, and as professionals, there are certain decisions you make on the pitch that don’t have to come from the coach because you play to the coach’s instructions and you add your own.
I think we have not been thinking ahead. I have been granting interviews, and if you remember what I have been talking about in the last three to four years, it is beginning to manifest now. I said all this before now; not that I am a seer or the man who saw tomorrow. I was only making sense from my experience and knowledge of the game. We have not been proactive in our thinking.
I have always insisted that it is only Nigerian coaches that can solve this problem of the national team. I still stand by it. If we were thinking ahead of time, these problems associated with the national team would have been addressed by now. I don’t want to go into details now. The coaches were supposed to be thinking ahead. It could get worse. I didn’t know it would come so soon.
I said that a time would come that we may not be able to qualify for the Nations Cup talk less of the World Cup. 32 or so number of countries qualify for the Nations Cup. If you cannot qualify for that, how can you qualify for the World Cup that has 9 slots? But we still have the opportunity to salvage the situation. It was a very bad result.
Only one team will qualify from Group L, which has Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, and Tanzania.
