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Super Eagles winger, Moses Simon, has exclusively told Completesports.com that the Nigeria national team has all it takes to win the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire without being a very entertaining side.
The FC Nantes left winger says he believes the Super Eagles can go all the way to win Nigeria’s fourth AFCON title if every one of the players gives it their best shot, adding that the team is blessed with some of the best players in the continent.
“Yes, we may not be playing the kind of football that catches the eye presently but we have the quality and talents to win the AFCON in Cote D’Ivoire. We will give it our best shot to win the title for ourselves and the country,” Simon told Completesports.com.
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“We may not entertain or play flowing football, but we can win the cup with the quality and doggedness we boast of. Haven’t you seen teams play ugly football to get results? We won’t play ugly, but we may not play the best football to win in Cote d’Ivoire.
“I am not saying we won’t try to entertain, but our main aim in Cote D’Ivoire will be to play to win the title. We will be purposeful and direct, but it all depends on how the coach wants us to go about it. We play as the coach wants us to play, but we just want to win the title,” the Nantes forward concluded.
The Super Eagles are in Group A with hosts Cote D’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, and Guinea Bissau at the AFCON 2023 scheduled to get underway from January 13 until February 11, 2024.
Super Eagles last won the AFCON title in 2013 when South Africa hosted the tournament with the late Stephen Keshi as coach.
By Richard Jideaka, Abuja
9 Comments
Goals is what wins matches and trophies.
The best entertainment is putting the ball in the opponent’s net.
Na tiki taka we go chop? You can pass the ball better than Barcelona, but if the ball is not in the opponent’s net, you have nothing.
We need goals aplenty.
Even with fumbling goalies, if we score more goals than we concede in every match we play, we don win the trophy be dat.
No matter how many howlers our goalies commit, if we keep scoring, we will still win. Getting reliable goalies will of course make the process smoother.
The good thing about this squad is that they do create lots of chances. Kudos to Peseiro for that. What is now needed is a high conversion rate. If we can convert 50% minimum of all the chances we create, we will be strong contenders for the Afcon trophy.
You are right. Nigeria are strong contenders for the Afcon.
These guys should leave the talk about winning the afcon and just concentrate on their football. They are adding too much pressure on themselves. Do we have the potential? Absolutely! Especially if we get a reliable goalie, We must just crack on and work. Our outfield players are certainly as good as any other team except the gk department. My advice is stop talking about winning the afcon and be humble , taking every game as they come.
Golden Child said the right comment, so Super Eagles must concentersate on thier playing on thier clubs and keep themselves healthy before the begining of AFCON. tournament in Cote De’ Ivore January 2024.
Winning without first qualifying from the group, scalong through the second round, etc. That is how they begin to give.false hope like they did to OBI. In a contest among four, they never sat down to analyze the probability of winning is 0.25.
Fake pastors forgot to mention the credentials of the other candidates and that it was an election. 0ne divided by 24 is the probability of winning AFCON. Stop raising false hope.and making nonsensical predictions.
Anything is possible even Denmark won Euro 92.
The only childish player among them is chukueze who needs to drop is stupid entertainment, that guy thinks he is playing with his village people, i advise pesero to drop him for tella, as we all can see, pesero is mr 442, alot of people have been complaining why the midfielders are only four in numbers, let me logicaly respond to that confusion, pesero have 23 man list and three of them are goal keepers, the man likes to have two players in each of these positions, if he plays 2 midfielders he will only need four of them, every position have two players each and the man is verry decisive about it, any of these players can cover for the other, if he increases the number of the midfielders it will affect other positions because that is how they play against each other in their training matches before real games, i think i like the idea, lets hope on a sucessfull 442, i also like that he is biulding a team capable of doing without any player, that is why tella comes as a better option than chukueze in this coming turnament, the team have iheanacho and chukueze in the right wing, without iheanacho the team will suffer cos chukueze can be easily locked down he cant be trusted, if the coach decide to play lookman there, he is likely going to fail bcos lookman havnt realy impressed in any of the wings, tella who is capable of playing both wings is logicaly better option for chukueze at this moment, onless chuks proves me wrong, ndidi will come to replace aribo, aribo will only have a spot if the coach decide to push lookman to the attack and drop one of awoniyi or moffi, which will be a tough one.
Lastly pesero should have invited rasheed to see how he can mount the post.
Like he is trying to discredit the entertainment football they played in the last afcon. Isn’t what everybody was complaining of during Rohr that he doesn’t play good football? Now he knows it doesn’t mean how you play but just to win. Now it don red, we said it you will regret sacking that man for a very long year.
They are better start thinking of VAR, unnecessary tackles. You may be the one winning, if you don’t think of any upset. Forget it, even then there was no VAR, did that guy Keita not cos an upset in 2010 World Cup? Think of those, then marry your strategies right.
When rohr played biz football: played ugly and churned out needed results, some stupid folks and overzealous armchair screen coaches shouted down the roof that they needed a coach who would play like Brazil and real madrid and won matches! They complained “the eagles played ‘ugly’ football that was not screen friendly!” albeit being owed backlog of wages and allowances and being denied access to some requested facilities. To sooth their taste, They brought in mr technical adviser alias mr “express yourselves” and he couldn’t even make it out of the second round of the competition with his “Brazil” style of football. Beaten shamefully by a second tier Tunisian team led by an assistant coach. Now, we have one of the players coming out to tell us that it is results that matter instead of entertainment football which many clamoured for. Well, no matter how hard you try to hide the truth , it must surely find a way to make itself known. It is just a matter of time. Everything happening now is tilting back to the coaching philosophy or rohr.