Flying Eagles head coach, Ladan Bosso refused to blame his players after their ouster from the ongoing 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Argentina.
Bosso’s boys dominated their quarter-final contest against South Korea but still ended up losing 1-0.
Choi Seokhyun scored the decisive goal for the Taegeuk Warriors in extra time.
Read Also: 2023 U-20 W/Cup: How Flying Eagles Rated In Defeat To South Korea
The gaffer praised his players for their impressive performance in the game.
Bosso however claimed the Flying Eagles were let down by their poor finishing.
“We tried our best but it wasn’t good enough. Our finishing wasn’t good. But you can see we’ve left a group of players for the federation to build on.”
South Korea will face Italy in the quarter-finals on Thursday.
18 Comments
Koreans by nature are smaller than Nigerians in stature but the coach went out of his way to select the tallest and biggest players at that category in their country, they were deliberate in their selection and it paid off at least against our boys. So Mr Bosso you and your colleagues should begin to do same in Nigeria, be deliberate in your selection of players to your National teams , stop favoring players because of tribe or how much money they are able to pay or the connection they have. Look, this year’s tournament was an opportunity for you to shine, has it ever occurred to to that winning the World cup can change your life . Your team lacked bite at the striking role because you left the best legs in that department at home and took strikers who had no business representing Nigeria as the best strikers at that level. I know the fact that we as a country have for a long time abandoned grassroot development of our soccer makes your job of scouting more difficult but you guys have to go to every corner of Nigeria to truely scout for diamond in the rough.
Same question I have been asking myself, why do we suddenly have players from the certain religion/region dominating the strikers list for the national teams except the super eagles, look at team list of the u17, u20 & u23 teams of late and see what I am trying to say, unfortunately none of them could score more than a goal in all the competitions they represented Nigeria, if we continue on this inglorious journey of nepotism and tribalism we will only continue on the part of failure
You have said it all bro.
If we say this is pure tribalism, some people here will tell us to keep quiet. Have they seen how selecting people based on quota system (or na my tribesman be president so I go select em people for national teams) have been able to bring us glory?
We know those regions who are best when it comes to sports in Nigeria. These regions as I have said before are, the West, East, and South south. But over the years, especially this past decade they have been imposing people who are not the best as sportsmen to represent Nigeria.
They will soon carry the same shameless attitude to our female teams.
Pride goes before a fall!
‘Nearly cannot kill a bird’, this is the lot of those who allow nepotism and envy to becloud their reasoning.
What u get is mediocrity, we tried our best, near success syndrome and failures…. Deal with that.
Congratulations South Korea!!!!
No one can curse whom God has blessed and the Truth (light) will certainly prevail!
Pls remember to award the Dr*gident a mediocre cup of mud… Deal with that.
My people you may talk from today till the world ends, this Mr Bosso of a man is a tribalism. I said in my earlier post that the nepotic coach will not take us anywhere. He is an average coach only satisfied with being a quarter finalist. Even the clueless midfield and strikers he carried, he will keep the one-eyed strikers till when it is too late before he will relieve his blind nos 9, 11 and others. The worst of the players he brought in was no 14, a certain Abdullahi, who failed to know that he was playing football and not in a competition to eat kuli-kuli. Tomorrow Bosso will be promoted and allowed to keep pace with his mediocrity in the development of our age-group football. What a shame
Factors That Curtailed Bosso’s Success In Argentina:
The Flying Eagles failed to attain a podium finish at this year’s U-20 World Cup in Argentina under the tutelage of perennial youth coach Landan Bosso.
A solo header from South Korea was the thin edge of the wedge that eventually knocked Nigeria out in the quarter finals.
The factors behind this failure can be divided into two parts before being subdivided. These are macro and micro factors.
Macro:
The management of football across Nigeria is definitely not a blueprint for success. The domestic leagues are poorly managed and the national teams are poorly primed and motivated.
These have to change.
Micro:
1) Cracked Codes: Our coaches (Eguavoen, Ugbade, Danjuma) and now Bosso all have credible and compelling methods and philosophies that could bring success. The problem emerges once their methods have been dissected and decoded by savvy opposition coaches. This often leads to these Nigerian teams being dismantled.
Not until our coaches know how to neutralise attempts made at neutralising their own methods will we taste success.
Eguavoen zoomed into the round of 16 with a compelling method only to be dismantled by a savvy Tunisian. Danjuma was as explosive as a rocket in the group stages of the U-20 women’s world cup only to be brought back down to earth in the quarter finals once his coaching code was cracked.
Same as Ugbade and yesterday, the Koreans cut of the wings, loaded the box 18, bided their time to score the 1 goal that they know Ugbade and Bosso will forever struggle to overcome.
2) Team selection: Bosso’s boys could not break the stubborn Korean defence simply because they lacked the guile, trickery, imagination and cutting edge to wreck havoc.
It begs the question: were these the best legs he could assemble at home and abroad?
Ugbade lost his midfield to MRI and it experienced a meltdown. Isn’t Nigeria big enough to produce suitable replacements?
Eguavoen left out some rather skilful players against Ghana and Tunisia because he never heard of them 🙂 .
Questionable player selections is killing our chances of success.
3) Available players: Actually, are our players good enough? Eguavoen, Danjuma, Ugbade and Bosso will unleash these players to attack attack attack as if they are Barcelona, Manchester City or Liverpool.
Our opponents will just sit back, soak pressure, bide their time and score the ONE goal they need for victory. Then they will give us back the ball to play with like kindergarten children for the remainder of the match, funny isn’t it?
Against Tunisia Eguavoen bossed possession and lost 1:0. Ugbade bossed possession against Burkina Faso and lost 2:1. Yesterday, Bosso monopolized possession and also lost by one goal.
Perhaps FIFA should make possession the deciding factors in games so that all these possessions of Nigeria will not go to waste.
Gernot Rohr cried, cried and beg Nigerians not to over-estimate the capacity of our players, but no one listened. He would ask his Super Eagles to be humble, cede possession, sit back and hit opponents when they are most vulnerable.
He just didn’t feel Nigerian players were technically grounded enough for attack attack attack football.
We said the German gaffer was disrespectful of our players. But time and time again we now see these same players (under local coaches that know their worth 🙂 ) collapse like a hapless pack of cards.
God help Nigerian national teams o!
I would have said something,but seeing your comment what else can I say, especially the Rohr aspect. You have said it all.
Hahahahaha…..we have the best players in Africa…LMAOoo…these players can win afcon under any coach in 2 weeks…LMAOoo.
Remove Osimhen and maybe Chukwueze and we are no better than the likes of DR Congo, Guinea and their likes.
Quantity is and should never be equated to quality…!!!
We need to reevaluate the “quality” of everything that has to do with football in that country, be it tangible or intangible.
And lastly…we should start learning to see, say and act the truth and stop listening to liars and egotrippers.
It baffles me all the time i read some of your comments that always give a pass mark, sometimes high rating to Gernot Rohr who spent six years as the coach of our National team with no achievement compared to what some Nigerian coaches did with the same team under a shorter spell of time. Yet you guys always find it expedient to condemn somebody like Eguavoen who was only draft to the team about two months to a major tournament, football is not magic, it takes time for a team to jell together and Gernot Rohr had all the time in the World yet failed woefully. Rohr had no business being the coach of Super Eagles because he lacked the technical and tactical abilities to handle our National team that was why he was always looking confused on the sidelines each time our boys played. His invitations were laughable e.g. Moses Simon and Samuel Kalu were teammates in Belgium Pre World cup in Russia but he kept on inviting Moses Simon and ignoring Samuel Kalu who to me was a better winger than Moses Simon, then he included Moses Simon in his final list for the World cup of that year but he got injured soon afterwards yet Rohr refused to draft in Samuel Kalu who he knew was good enough to man that position etc etc . So invitation problems were not limited to our local coaches alone.
So you have all the time in this world to type this rubbîsh, can’t you see that you are sounding bittered trying to discredit Rohr, you are so clueless.
Equavon was part of those planning Rohr sack, he had his eyes on the job so he would have been prepared for it.
Can you compare the super eagles under Rohr and the ones we have after Rohr. Rohr was producing result and we had no reasons to fear until he left. If Rohr was in charge we wouldn’t have been disgrace out of Nations Cup by Tunisian B-team with an assistant coach. A low grade Ghanian team wouldn’t have bundle us out of world cup in Qatar. And I believe you know this
God doesn’t and will never share His Glory with anyone. Coach Bosso on his own will of stupidity attributed his short term success to drunker ,drugg addicts ,certificate forger,election rigged selected president. I told you earlier on that nothing good will come to Nigeria as long as APC is at the helms of affairs in your shithole country. Oro agba ti ko ba se ni owuro, a se ni oju ale.
Mr. Bosso, you really tried tactically but your decision to focus on 15 players will hunt you forever. How on earth did the two guys wearing #20 and #14 get selected ? The fact that they are considered for matches tells more about the composition of your bench. Are these guys the reason you dropped the youngsters from Arsenal and Crystal palace ?
The lack of a #9 cost the team dearly.
That Bench apart of Saki and Emmanuel umeh…..That bench was rubbish.. Honestly the South Koreans were not that special. BOSS JUST FAILED WITH HIS SELECTION AND TACTICS IN KNOCKOUT FOOTBALL AGAIN…..16 YEARS AFTER BEIN KNOCKED OUT BY CHILE IN 2007…
Football Fanatic, The bench was fantastic, things just didn’t work out on the day simple.
Don’t ever show your face here again because I have wiped the floor of football analysis with you.
From today onwards, bow down when you come to my town. I own you.
Forget the number 9. Bosso had 7 strikers and used only 3. No be coach e be jare
Guys… It hurts that we are out but let’s be positive. There are some bright sparks in the team that will surely make it to the senior team in time. Seeing that Ladan Bosso dropped the guy Ogbelu who anchored our midefied base in absence of Daga at the AFCON qualifiers really hurt me, especially looking that he then took some really lethargic midfielders like the No. 14 and No. 20 who didn’t have the level quite frankly.
Infact we have to count ourselves lucky that we got to the quater final stage. Actually from the inception of the tournament I earmarked quater finals as a success for Nigeria in my mind because the team really didn’t parade x-factor players, they had guys who at most were decent.
Again, the Salim Fago guy just appeared from nowhere and really does not have the skillset to lead attack for a country like Nigeria in a global competition. It was obvious Bosso only took about 14 very decent players and open up the rest squad spots for higher bidder since NFF in their wise-foolishness don’t even give the coaches contract.
One obvious thing I keep wondering recently that is now recurring decimals in Nigeria age grade football is that you always see players selected from specific academies and graasroot teams like 36lions, Giant Brilars, Mavlon FC, Dabo Babes and a few others every U-17 and U-20 cycle.
I think Nigeria soccer lovers especially those of us here closer home should thoroughly investigate these said teams for if to truly understand those who own those business football clubs often enjoying player-patronage from Nigeria’s age grade national football team selectors. I have the feelings those cub owners directly induce our coaches to pick players from their ranks.
If we can drag the net of our scouting properly all around grassroot teams in Nigeria, we can easily unravel world beaters at all levels. The drawback of this kind of schemish practice is that it robs the country of the real top talents that should come to the fore.
Salim Fago hails from Katsina state but is a player registered under Mavlon FC, the other young man from my state in the U-17 Charles Agada, was also snatched from Otukpo, Benue State and enrolled at Mavlon FC in Lagos as a student player. I think if we investigate keenly we will see that some of these clubs are partly owned by NFF Top Brass.
Finally, I want us here in this forum to push Completesports Nigeria to start a loud advocacy for the invitation of Chuba Akpom, to be honest guys, I think he has been overlooked by Poseiro again in the up-coming games as it appears Gift Orban and Victor Boniface are the only two new names.
In my opinion of we forgive that lad Akpom for not picking Nigeria when we wnst for her like 5years ago, since he is still a Nigrtian afterall, he clearly deserves callup now ahead of the likes of Onuachu and Aribo. I know we are spoilt for striking options but Akpom excelled with his current run of goals playing attacking midfield for Middlesborough FC.
We must never forget that Akpom broke into Arsenal team under Arsene Wenger and even then was considered a better player than Iwobi, but somehow his progress stalled until lately. That guy has goals in him, something that can rival the likes of Iheanacho, Awoniyi and even Onuachu.
There appears to be people at the NFF blocking him from the national team, I am also of the opinion that Jose Poseiro does not believe so much in the lad even though that’s more witch-hunting and should be a no-brainer. I just want that man Jose Poseiro to go because to be honest he is not on Rohr’s level and we let Rohr despite.
The man Jose Poseiro is just building CV with out National Team and has nothing to offer us, in this modern game of midfield war and possession heist, the Portuguese still see a 4man midfield and the lethargic 4-4-2 formation as the best thing in world soccer since England won 1966 world cup with it.
I wish I wake up and hear that Poseiro has been let go. He just does not have what will take us anywhere near football glory in Africa and anywhere else… in my opinion.
Hello All, i read almost all the your comment but the true of the matter is local coaches lack alot from Austin, Nduka and Bosso they are all the same people, they dont improve themselve even thought they re hungry but tactically they are all poor, no matter the kind of players you assemble for this coaches they will still failed, when you look at all the 3 teams and the tournament, you will agree with me we have good young players, who re willing to deliver but lack of technical and sound coaches crew is the major problem of those team, imagine Austin is the head of technical department of NFF?