Benin Republic star Jordel Dossou has revealed how the Cheetahs were able to tame the Super Eagles in Monday’s 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifier.
Gernot Rohr’s side recorded a shocking 2-1 victory over their illustrious neighbours at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium, Abidjan.
It was their second win over the three-time time African champions in 17 meetings.
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Dossou cancelled out Raphael Onyedika’s opener for Nigeria, before Steve Mounie netted the winning goal in first half added time.
“This style of play was worked on in training. We know that Mounié Steve wins almost all duels,” Dossou said as per 24haubenin.
“Well before the goal action, Steve called me and told me that since Ajayi (Nigeria player ) is on me all the time, I’ll have to change my strategy.
“On the first occasion, he let the ball pass, too bad I missed it. For the second time, I hid behind the defender, and as soon as Steve let the ball go. I appeared and stole the ball from him to equalize.”
4 Comments
See communication, leadership, and strategy on display. See how they planned the equalizer and the winner after analyzing Ajayi and Bassey, and it worked. Who was the leader of the team yesterday? None. Ndidi was just running helter and skelter like the rest of them.
Ekong showed leadership. He was always putting heads together with Osimhen and sometimes Nwabali. He was not just playing and defending; he was observing. Aside from the fact the team had no quality coaching, there was also no leadership in both matches. That’s a very crucial element in any team, even outside football.
Finidi was not ripe to be the national team coach of a whole SE.
Ndidi is not ripe as SE captain. No charisma. No leadership.
NFF sacrificed quality coaching cos they wanted to get back at Amunike. Cos Enoh recommended local coach, you felt you should sabotage the entire country just to spite Amunike. Amunike that has coached and made history as national team coach before. nah him you dey compare with Finidi who’s not been at that level ever. Useless people.
Even before the match I knew Benin will score through setpiece. Same way they scored Rwanda.
If the coach is up to par he will not feed players info
My understanding is that they did exactly what Zwane the South African did to score against the SE. The attacker pretended to Nigeria’s defenders that he was offside and moved to an onside position to receive the crucial pass.
In short, he hid from the defenders by faking offside. This was all pre-arranged, meaning they’d notice the defenders were not alert to someone moving from an offside position to an onside.
The truth is that Nigeria had no half decent Defenders in both games. With the type of defense we had at Afcon, Nigeria would have won both games against SA and Benin. They missed Ekong, Aina and Zaidu. To be fair to Finidi,his players scored good goals only to throw away very bad, give-away goals by poor and lacklustre defending