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A costly mistake from Super Eagles defender Chidozie Awaziem contributed to relegation threatened Leganes’ 2-1 home defeat to Real Valladolid in Saturday night’s LaLiga game, Completesports.com reports.
A miscommunication between Awaziem and Leganes goalkeeper Ivan Cuellar handed Valladolid an early lead in the game.
A long ball from Valladolid half saw Awaziem get to the ball before an opponent, but his header to Cuellar went past him after the keeper had already rushed out of the box, which handed Enes Unal an easy tap in to put the visitors ahead on two minutes.
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In the 54th minute Valladolid doubled their lead this time through Ruben Alcaraz.
With six minutes remaining Leganes were handed a lifeline as Oscar Rodriguez scored from the penalty spot to make it 2-1.
All efforts by Leganes to salvage at list a point was futile as Valladolid held on to claim all three points.
The defeat saw Leganes remain in the relegation zone in 19th position on 23 points in the league table.
The game was Awaziem’s 19th LaLiga appearance for Leganes in the current campaign.
Also in action for Leganes was Awaziem’s Super Eagles teammate Kenneth Omeruo who played for 90 minutes in his 20th league appearance of the season.
By James Agberebi
8 Comments
It was a rather unfortunate error by Awaziem that can be put down to miscommunication. Goalie probably should have been in his 18 and maybe Awaziem should have checked to see where the goalie was before heading in that direction or even just cleared the ball away.
Of note in this match is that Omeruo was the captain on the day! That’s a bit of a big deal to me
we need more rugged defenders in super Eagles
Mr Rugged Defenders Advocator @daniel
Did you watch same Awaziem @AFCON?? He was arguably the Best defender in the Tournament. Now he made a mistake in a single match and he has been dis-rugged?? Lol. I think your Akpoguma is the Saviour Sergio Ramos that will take us to the promise Land?? Na wa ooo
Abeg, learn to praise our Defenders and stand by them even in a time as this. I was so glad to see Leganes line up today. Kenneth and Awaziem paired in Defense for the whole 90 mins in Spain…That’s a wow for me. Keep it up boys
Both defenders did very well. A thing of pride that we had two of them for 90mins in La liga.
I beg to differ with complete sports writeup today. It was not Awaziem that made the error rather their goalkeeper. What is the goalkeeper doing outside the penalty yard box seeing that Awaziem is already om the striker with Omerue flanking them. What Awaziem is just perfect. How would he know that their keeper left his duty post and came to do the work of the defenders. Awaziem has been very solid for them in the defence. Pls lets be objective and constructive in our writeups.
I guess describing incident as the result of miscommunication between Awaziem and the his goalkeeper will be apt.
They both have to share the blame for the mishap. That said, Awaziem’s pace and recovery rate were called to question but he fell short on both counts. It was not totally impossible for him to race to recover the situation after the goalkeeper had clearly missed his header however (even with a good starting position) the opposition attacker raced ahead of him to stab home and break the hearts of their fans.
It proved to be a lethal stab as Leganes would fail to recover, eventually conceding another goal before a penalty gifted them a face-saving consolation goal.
Awaziem and Omeruo continue to clock valuable game time in a very high level that is that is the Spanish La Liga which goes to underscore the calibre and quality of players who kit out for the Super Eagles these days.
Awaziem should approach this mishap quite simply as one of those things. He remains an asset to the Super Eagles if nothing else but his versatility which was on display to indelibly compelling effect in the last Afcon where he was deployed as a right fullback.
That said, his inadequate clearance contributed to the sequence of events that led to the freekick that Mahrez masterfully converted to add fuel to frustrations of Super Eagles fans who would for the umpteenth time have to settle for an Afcon bronze.
Another dodgy clearance yesterday exposed his defence and contributed in condemning his team to a defeat (even though as noted, his goalkeeper had a fault in the confusion). It wasn’t that long ago when mistiming a header and his questionable positioning led to him freeing up South Africa’s Tokelo Ranti to head home against Nigeria in Uyo thereby condemning us to our first loss in a competitive fixture to the former Apartheid state.
But he will learn and like all great defenders, lessons learnt from these episodes should help Awaziem develop strategies to cope much better in such scenarios in the future.
I believe Awaziem will come good.
Awaziem’s mistimed jump against South Africa :
https://youtu.be/8UqbKkFQqj8
Well captured!
Quite an interesting read @deo.
Awaziem has never filled me with confidence at the back. Fortunately, between Omeruo, Ekong, and Ajayi we should be able to get a solid pairing for our forthcoming games.