Victor Osimhen is doubtful for Nigeria’s 2023 Africa Cup of Nations semi-final clash against the Bafana Bafana of South Africa.
Osimhen, according to the Super Eagles media officer, Babafemi Raji is suffering from abdominal discomfort.
The Napoli hitman failed to travel with the rest of the squad to Bouake on Monday night.
Read Also:Super Eagles, Ivory Coast Will Clash In AFCON 2023 Final –Mikel Predicts
The players and their officials departed Abidjan for Bouake via Air Cote d’Ivoire around 10pm local time.
Osimhen, who has been placed under close watch will join the rest of the squad on Tuesday if he is cleared by the medical team.
The 25-year-old has scored one goal and provided one assist in five matches at the AFCON 2023 finals.
Jose Peseiro’s men will take on the Bafana Bafana at the Stade de la Paix, Bouake on Wednesday.
By Adeboye Amosu in Abidjan
Photo by Ganiyu Yusuf
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COMMENTS
Is Osi injured or is this a mind game to give Bafana guys (who will head back to Cape Town with or without Osi anyway) false relief?
Rubbish and misleading headline from Complete Sports. It’s totally condemned compare to the real situation
I know that Oga Paseiro would regret his decision and also in a very hard way for selecting a 25-man list.
No1. The coach has overused our players, and it is about time to hurt the gaffer when it matters most.
No2. The gaffer has refused to use Nacho and Moffi in this tournament, and is he going to use the two now?
No3. Dessers would have been his better choice while Osimhen may not fit or available to play against South Africa.
If this report is true, then I don’t pity the coach at all but my country. Dessers will be shaking his head whenever he is now.
Hmmm. Nigeria, my country. Some people said I like to complain a lot but now I hope they are seeing what is happening ba? I wish Osimhen a quick recovery. It is well. Ire o. God bless Nigeria!!!
Dresser bawo? Since when we don case close that matter
Seriously i don’t pity the coach for how he uses players. He overused them. Some times you can see osimhen extra tired he would leave him to go on even at 85mins. He should have substituted but no until player wan faint for game. The way iheanacho go dey feel no go make sense. Despite his finishing skills
To you all that asking me questions. Please, what happened when Oga Paseiro made substitutions against Angola?
That should tell you people what to expect when we meet a strong team.
Super Eagles still lack creative midfielder in this team and a goal puncher.
But my prayer is that may God see us through in this tournament. Fingers crossed. Good luck to Super Eagles. Ire o. God bless Nigeria!!!
Lol na dresser go dey for midfield abi?
Sometimes I just don’t understand how u analyze soccer
By this time u still dey lament about dresser when the competition is coming toban end common
Germany has won tournaments even without creative midfielders. Spain once won a tournament without an out and out strikers.
Omo9ja you talk as if there is always one way to win a tournament.
A coach has found a formation that’s just appropriate for the types of players he has and you’re complaining again.
Yes desser is good but he has also been tested too. There were times he faltered too. I like him and have mentioned him well here. But sometimes we need to be creative when we do analysis.
We are here in this situation today. Oshimen is injured. We have iheanacho on the bench we have onuachu we have moffi and you are making noise about the one that’s not here. That’s not good wisdom st this stage.
Don’t you think ademola can even be pushed into the center and iheanacho played behind him. Many possibilities.
And if we lose (God forbid) people like you omo9ja will come here and make noise that you said so. Must the coach and every one take what you said?
Let’s give these team some credit and the coach we have crucified as dumb. Common give him some credit.
The problem is that some of us find it difficult to be flexible when we analyse football.
This is total madness @Omo9ja how about previous tournaments where only 23 players were allowed. How was teams faring then? Why do we love criticism always. Most teams that came with 27 players has left the tournament long time but we are still here. Let us be positive for ones.
*were
Omo Naija pity yourself and not the coach. For christ sake leave the man alone. You talk as if Nacho and Desser are Messi and Ronaldo. Abaa aseju re ti npo ju. You dey overdo things. Are you expecting them to fail. From A reliable source I learnt the reason why Nacho and Moffi are not playing is because both players are undiscipline.. Nigeria players are doing well because the coach is discipline and a no nonsense. The formation being adopted by the coach requires hundred percent commitment which most players don’t like because it weakens them , Trouseir former eagles coach wanted to adopt this formation in 1998 but the players kicked against him. Rohr applied this formation against Argentina and we beat them ,but after that he couldn’t use it again because the players don’t like it and Rohr lack the discipline to effect his authority in the team so he went back to 433.See the eyes of our players get minutes to the game you will notice they are playing with their last breath. I believe no coach in his right sense will bench Nacho and Moffi if their input will be better than the ones on the field. Personally Nacho doesn’t have the rigor to play this formation.look at the way Lookman and Simon press to get the ball back in possession.
Thank you ezomo. I wonder why some people just like to bring up issues when there’s a little problem. Omo9ja is just one like that. Pesero will regret what again? You’re still talking about 25 man list at this period.
If oshimen is injured we have iheanacho, moffi and onuachu now. What’s the regret there again.
And you’re talking about desser at this stage.
Stop raising unnecessary alarm omo9ja. There are other strikers in the team
Like seriously @omonaija? What did I just read? You mean you still talking abt dresser or 27 players when AFCON is already in the semi final? Even the 25 players , have they all played? Omoh some people self ehhh.
@Omonaija loves pushing for new players, especially those born abroad. There’s nothing will do in this competition that those available haven’t done. Nothing special, to be honest
People have now generally seen how poor and ill equipped omo9ja is regarding what the Nigerian football is all about. He is still rooting for Desser to be brought into team even when the AFCON 2023 competition is about over. If Osimhen is not available for this match, so be it, that should not be the end. Iheanachor should play his role very well.
This people just want to give people like @omo9ja something to rant about.
I absolutely see this news as fake. The other news line said Nwanali and Osimhen sit out training never to report Osimhen doubtful. I don’t know where this is coming from.
Why are you all attacking him? when did it become a crime for him to express himself. And from what he just stated is he wrong. Is the coach not over using the players, we have other competent attackers he could bring into the team. AM not such or surprised he is gradually burning out some of this guy. Was dessers not making waves at rangers, why not include him in the team. Abeg make una go get busy and leave omo9ja alone.
Can you imagine what you are saying, a team is winning you still want the coach to change the system of winning, so if the coach change it and the team lost People like you will come here and attack the coach for changing a winning team
Secondly is reasonable to be talking of dresser by this time and this stage of the tournament, reason na , u Sabi book na
Please just go to hang transformer, because you not making any sense one bit. Did omo9ja start clamouring for the inclusion of dessers today. Your attack is just porous simple. A team that is parading the best attacking individuals just resorted to be packing the bus. What a shame
Justin. A shame. You said a shame. The players are in the semi final. You said a shame. We played all the football in Lagos final in 2000. We even scored a good penalty. Cameroon won.
Even in this tournament, which player has been influential to their teams more than Oshimen.
There’s no problem when omo9ja make his opinions. But some opinions just want to get you angry. Since he has been making claims about desser did anyone kick against him?
But you don’t talk about that at this stage just because Oshimen is not available. It’s unnecessary especially when we have iheanacho and onuachu in the team.
Will desser do better than iheanacho. Has omo9ja forgotten about the stats of iheanacho in super eagles.
So what’s the essence of his noise.
27 or 25 was in the past. Some players have not even played.
Justin don’t join him in his rants. Don’t let him make you abuse these players and the coach. To me they have tried. I never expected them to go four matches without conceding.
The players have given their best.
You said they pack the bus but how many teams have created more chances than this team?
Agreed Oshimen has lost some good chances but he had also created some for others. He also had two goals disallowed in this tournament.
His performance against is about the best I have seen a Nigerian player play against Cameroon.
Thanks Christian,
first and foremost you know we were robbed of that cup in 2000, ikepba penalty was a clear goal. Don’t know how many Afcon you have watched so far, but i can tell you for free some games created more chances than the eagles. Aren’t we parking the bus. All we doing is just countering no free flow game. We have arguable the best attack at this tournament,fans are expecting us to be swallowing up teams with big goal margins. Well you can’t fault omo9ja for raising up this issue now at this stage, all indications shows that the coach doesn’t even trust his bench. We both agree that oshinmen was overused, and that’s because we didn’t score a large number of goals. Maybe if their was competition from Dessers we wouldn’t get be debating this. Well i wish them all the best
Lol someone like u that can’t engage in intellectual discourse in a public domain, bring out the level of ur stupidity by making an insult ur defense mechanism.
U dey small for my number
Parking The bus indeed why did other teams not park the bus and make it difficult for eagles score
Try and reason before you make a comment I beg
Why waste time on a clueless being. Don’t even think you exist. Please go get busy.Look who asking someone to reason before commenting. Lol asking a dumb foolish question
Lol I am not staying in a shack or slup area like ub, that’s why u talking of transformers. What I am busy with it will year for all ur siblings and generations to get to one tent of my journey
YOU THIS UNCIRCUMCISED PIG .
SECONDLY WHAT DO U DEFINE CLUELESS ? YOU THAT REASON THRU ANUS AND OPEN UR MOUTH TOBANY CONVENIET RADIUS AND YARN RUBBISH
Show ur face here u this bastrard imbecile of monkey species
If not for technology who gv u phone Marggot
I am gona makeup mu guest stupid idiot
Indiscipline chicken
This is the reason for the inclusion of Kelechi whom I believe will fit in well in the attack and prove to be more clinical at the final 3rd, and I’m not disputing the contributions of Osigoal because he is priceless when fit even when he doesn’t score. Whoever has the chance to play must try to be clinical and help us forge ahead.
I’ve never praised this Peseiro guy (or whatever) because he still seems a fluke to me. How do you take 27 players to a tournament but rely on just 15 players??? You have Kelechi Iheanacho (probably the best finisher in the team) but refused to play him for one nonsense reason which doesn’t make any sense to me. So what happens if Osimhen can’t play (God forbid)? You’ll now rely on Paul Onuachu who doesn’t have pace and can’t harrass defenders like Osimhen? Or you just throw in a rusty-Kelechi Iheanacho into a crucial semifinal match to embarrass him and make him a national enemy? For five consecutive games, you couldn’t give Kelechi even 5 munites of football?
Rotation is good for to prevent players from being burn-out. Osimhen is a human and all those ‘gidigidi’ will have some kind of effect at some point. Phil Foden (who finds it difficult to get a regular start at City), scored a hattrack yesterday. That’s what happens when you give players chance.
I hope Osimhen is fit for the game. If I were Kelechi, I won’t start the game. You need at least 60% game-time to start this type of game. Let him start Onuachu or even bench Kelechi for the entire tournament. Afterall, he’ll still recieve medal if Nigeria wins Afcon. Mtcheew
*hattrick*
John-1,
So if you were Emmanuel Emenike, you would have refused playing in the Afcon final against Zambia in 1994 because the coach overlooked you throughout the tournament.
So reaching the semi-final of the Afcon after changing strategies and selecting the right players is a fluke!
I guess you know better than a coach on how to coach players!
He didn’t pick 27 players because he believes that 25 players can help him achieve his target of reaching the semi-final. Now that his approach is justified you still feel the need to criticise him?
Interesting.
*** Emmanuel Amuneke ***
*hattrick*
Deo – Emmanuel Amunike was virtually an unknown player to most fans before that 1994 final. His inclusion surprised many. It’s entirely a different comparison. On the contrary, Iheanacho has being a Super Eagles mainstay with 15 goals (even as a support striker with less munites and less starts). There’s absolutely no football reason why Peseiro will bench him for 5 games – 5 games!
They claim Iheanacho is not defensive-minded lol. What is Iwobi’s defensive contribution? He almost gave Angola an equaliser.
John you’re wrong. Amuneke was not an unknown figure before 1994.
He played the all African games hosted in Nigeria He was phenomenal.
He had played with eagles during the qualifiers for world cup and afcon.
Then westerhof was using the main eagles for world cup qualifications and using some home based players and up coming foreign based players for afcon qualifiers.
Oliseh, amuneke and finidi first played afcon qualifiers. They broke into the main team before afcon 1994.
Amuneke was part of the qualifiers for Afcon and world cup qualifiers.
In fact he was the best left winger in the team. Ikpeba was another left winger but he usually played for Monaco as a striker so he was not really doing the job well when he is played as a Left winger.
In our match against south Africa for world cup qualifiers 1994, in Nigeria ikpeba played in the left and was ineffective.
So even amuneke was higher in pecking order than ikpeba in the left.
But due to tactical reasons . Due to the forwards we have then, amuneke was rooted to the bench all through
If he was unknown why would westerhof trust him to use him in the final when we did have injuries to any forward?
I don’t care what the coach does. Give me the cup. Shikena.
***”when we did not have injuries to any forward**”
You’re taking everything out of context. Was Amunike a household name for Nigerian fans before that final?
Very interesting Deo. The way some people analyse can be very funny. But they are entitled to their own opinion.
Oshimen is playing tomorrow.
Yes. John. Amuneke was a household name. That was why his not playing untill the final was a big news. Some players did not play at all. How come they did not become news. I don’t know whether you watched eagles during the 1993 qualifiers but I just gave you the details of what happened.
Amuneke was already a popular figure in the set up. Because there were many write ups analyzing his non appearance before the final just like iheanacho.
@Christian Ministries in Nigeria- Amuneke was not a big name in Super Eagles before that final. He was in the team then but no one cared if he played or not because he hadn’t made much contributions in the team before that final. That was why no one clamoured for a playing time for him in that tournament. He only came to lime light after scoring those 2 goals. From then on, his name started ringing bells. His case is totally different from Iheanacho’s
Thank you John 1,
The fact remains that – having been on the bench for most of the tournament – Amuneke still made a huge impact in the final and only game he played in the tournament.
The fact about his or Iheanacho’s profile doesn’t come into the equation.
People like you only want to see your favourite players play, full stop. If Nwabili is benched tomorrow, your toys will be out of your pram quicker than I can spell John-1.
It’s difficult for any coach to satisfy the player requirements of 100 million Nigerians, we only have to judge the coach based on performance and so far all your assessments have been superfluous to Peseiro’s accomplishments.
I love Iheanacho and strongly believe that he will contribute constructively to this team. But the box stops with Peseiro who has installed Onuachu as his number 2 centre forward in this tournament.
You either put up or (in the words of ex Prime Minister John Major) shut up. Sorry for being so blunt brother, I still respect you.
Deo – Forget that thing wey you dey talk. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I didn’t even know who Nwabali was before this tournament. The last time I watched Chippa United game was when they had Daniel Akpeyi. I didn’t watch the Mexico friendly either. But as soon as I watched him play in this AFCON, I knew he was far better than Uzoho and Okoye combined (something you can’t see). You even attributed his success to defensive cover, forgetting that Uzoho faced just one attempt against Ghana in Abuja – the rest is history!
I’ll be surprised if a decent European club doesn’t hijack Nwabali after this Afcon. He has all the requirements of a modern-day keeper.
Of course if Nwabali is benched my toys will be out. We will leave you to watch your Odinaka Uzoho alone!
Hahahaha. 🙂
One love John. I absolutely love your last sentence which I quote:”Of course if Nwabali is benched my toys will be out. We will leave you to watch your Odinaka Uzoho alone!”.
It made me laugh in a very friendly way.
I do agree with you that everyone is entitled to their own views, opinions and stance. So I have to respect your position regardless of how it makes me feel.
Please, watch the game with me regardless of whomever Peseiro selects so we can all end up enjoying the victory together. Also I think all the players in camp – even unpopular ones like Aribo, Musa, Zaidu and Onuachu – are capable of getting the job done in style.
Thank; You are a cool guy.
Deo – Na play wey dey play bro. One love. We all love our country
Can Onuachu Step Up To Osihmen’s Plate?
This is not the news I want to hear but there’s no cause for alarm.
As no more than 4 credible media outlets have reported Osihmen’s unfortunate struggle with a stomach bug – which threatens to rule him out of the titanic s/final clash against South Africa – one has to assign much credibility to this sad news.
But the silver lining is that the Super Eagles have strikers who are more than capable to interpret the centre forward role in a manner capable of propelling Super Eagles to victory.
Think of the second in charge Paul Onuachu. With the sterling quality of crosses and long balls being able to be delivered by players like Simon, Aina, Onyeka, Iwobi, Lookman and Bassey, the aerial beast of Onuachu will be unleashed.
In the minutes he has played thus far, Onuachu’s link up play and ability to bring others to play have been uncanny. He has won fouls for Nigeria in dangerous areas whilst using his corporeal frame to hold off tackles, help Nigeria retain possession which adds to Nigeria’s overall strategy of frustrating oppositions from the front. He is able to drop deep to effectively function as a false 9 thereby allowing Lookman and Simon time and space to wreck havoc!
Onuachu doesn’t need pace for his own rendition of fulfilling the essential requirements of the centre forward role. He only needs positioning and precision which he has in spades. In fact Peseiro’s 3-4-3 formation is tailor made to unlock the killer instincts in Onuachu.
It is such a fascinating prospect to see Onuachu start for the Super Eagles in this set up.
I am wishing Osihmen speedy recovery and hope he makes the semi final match day squad. If not Onuachu has what he takes to step in and make a lasting impression based on his stills, attributes and hunger.
Oga deo, tell me say this your praise writeup for onuachu is just imaginary?
ah Sylvester,
See how the Super Eagles have proven you wrong in this tournament. Onuachu is the real deal.
Osimihen, Michael Jordan, kobi Bryant all these great athletes played with injuries and some degree of sickness. You’re the African best player you ve to emulate the great ones. Onyeka was willing to die in our last match he played with almost a broken shoulder. Pls don’t be like Ndidi a serial Deserter.
UPDATE: Victor Osimhen is on his way to join the Super Eagles in Bouake, Ivory Coast.
– He has received clearance from the medical team regarding his abdominal discomfort.
Osimhen is now fully fit and prepared to participate in the Semifinals against South Africa tomorrow.
SUPER EAGLES LET’S DO IT AGAIN
Thank you for the update Dr Banks. As some fans have complained that Osimhen is overused, perhaps Peseiro should “manage” his participation in the semi-finals by introducing him in 70 minutes to replace Onuachu who would by then have scored a hattrick to cement his place ahead of Osimhen in the final.
@deo — Do you think it’s impossible for Onuachu to score a hattrick? Who ever thought lookman would be Nigeria’s hit an in this tournament?
@deo — Do you think it’s impossible for Onuachu to score a hattrick? Who ever thought lookman would be Nigeria’s hitman in this tournament? I am sure you didn’t
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Danurch,
I strongly believe Onuachu can make a huge impact if called upon. This Peseiro’s system is well suited to his strong points.