President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Amaju Pinnick remains positive despite the Super Eagles failing to record a win in their friendlies against Mexico and Ecuador.
The Super Eagles lost 1-0 to Ecuador on Friday morning to end their US tour on a disappointing note.
Read Also: Int’l Friendly: Super Eagles Lose Again, Bow To Ecuador In New Jersey
Jose Peseiro’s men also fell to a 2-1 defeat to Mexico in their first friendly last Sunday.
“I am happy and I can tell you that we fulfilled our objectives of restoring the spirit of the Super Eagles following the failure to qualify for the FIFA World Cup,” Pinnick told thenff.com.
” We lost both games against Mexico and Ecuador narrowly but we were up for it and never finished on the back foot. The boys gave a good account of themselves in both games.
Read Also: Exclusive: Why Peseiro Will Succeed As Eagles Coach –Akpoborie
“Given the number of first-team players that were not available, we have to praise the boys who showed up here and gave their all. They have given us confidence going into the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers. The despondency is over and we can now march forward in sure-footed manner.”
Up next for the Super Eagles is a 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against the Leone Stars of Sierra Leone on Thursday, June 9.
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COMMENTS
Who are the boys that wii face S/L? Any new call ups?
And at the same time, our administrators chose to disband a team that has won 3 African championships in a row!
Our female basketball team has been destroyed, just like that. AND FOR WHAT?
Not just our female basketball team, ALL OF OUR BASKETBALL TEAMS…!
The poor lads/lasses are beginning to suffer the trauma of seeing their sweat and blood flushed down the drains by a clueless egomanic like Sunday Dare.
Read below:
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Ezinne Kalu, a player of D’Tigress, Nigeria’s senior women basketball team, on Thursday, said she was not likely to represent the country again.
The D’Tigress point-guard said this via her twitter handle, following FIBA’s pronouncement that Mali would replace Nigeria at the upcoming 2022 Women’s Basketball World Cup in Australia.
“I don’t think I will ever wear the green and white again,” Kalu wrote.
Kalu, alongside others, secured Nigeria’s place at the World Cup after defeating Mali at the qualification stage in Serbia.
But they will now be replaced by their African rivals following Federal Government’s suspension of Nigeria’s basketball from international competitions for two years.
This had come as a result of the ongoing leadership tussle in the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF).
Other players have also voiced their frustrations on twitter, blaming Sunday Dare, the Youth and Sports Development Minister, and the NBBF for the ouster from the global showpiece.
Stan Okoye, who plays for D’Tigers, D’Tigress’ male counterparts, reacted thus: “Wow, what a shame! Greed, selfishness, corruption, all the above. My heart is broken for these ladies.
“Well done NBBF, Muhammadu Buhari, Sunday Dare, truly an embarrassment.”
Another D’Tigers player, Chimezie Metu, also described the situation as embarrassing.
“Extremely alarming. Decades of work have been thrown down the drain.
“Multiple-time African champions and multiple Olympic/World Cup bids and we don’t get to even participate in the next competition, not because of an athletic inability but because grown men are too busy fighting over money.
“Absolutely embarrassing.”
“At the end of the day, this is only a metaphor for what our people are going through in Nigeria. Innocent people suffering because our so-called “leaders” are too busy being greedy,” Metu added.
FIBA also said it would make known its decisions relating to NBBF’s participation in other international competitions and any potential disciplinary measures in due course.
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Nigeria is indeed a sick country where 1+1 is always wanted and wished to be equal to 37.
To become a world class athlete in any sport takes years and years of hard work.
Our male and female basketball players have overcome all kinds of personal and professional challenges to obtain what they have achieved in the sport.
After overcoming formidable opponents on the basketball court, our lads and ladies have succumbed to the ENEMY WITHIN. They have been vanquished by THEIR OWN.
Our government and administrators, who should be providing support to our athletes, have brought them to ruin.
Years of blood, sweat and tears flushed down the toilet, AND FOR WHAT?
If any revamping needs to be done, why not revamp the administrative setup? Allow the basketball teams to reap the fruits of their labor!
I will not be surprised if we get a lengthy ban and/or significant monetary fines as a result of this ill-advised tom-foolery.
It is our basketball players that will bear the brunt of this calamitous decision.
Abeg, what problem are they even solving…?
There is a LEGAL and LEGIT NBBF leadership recognized and ratified by FIBA. Any other group parading themselves are mere impostors who should be jailed…..but no, the LEGIT group are not Sunday Dare’s caucus. And the next thing is for the egomaniac who cant accept his ego being bruised by FIBA to tell the clueless president and C-in-C to withdraw Nigeria from FIBA for 2 years with a further 2 year consequence since most qualifiers for competitions beyond 2024 will take place within these 2 years. Whereas the so-called minister has less than 1 more year in office.
Stupidity at its peakest peak
Abeg which objective of SE eagles have lifted. This man is something else out he talk always? Anyway, his time is almost up hope someone better take over from him.
Where is it written in the constitution that Buhari is duty bound to take advise given by stupid and selfish individuals like Sunday Dare? Why will Buhari put our fate in the hands of a few greedy beings? These people are evil! It’s nothing to them the international careers of these young girls and boys are being destroyed by those who run the game. A lot of these girls changed nationality because of international competition. And now someone woke up in the threw all that through the windows. It’s satanic.
After losing the FIFA WC ticket to Ghana, I was looking forward to FIBA WC as consolation. We’ve qualified, both men and women. And look at it now. Ah!!
Shame on Sunday Dare
Shame on Kida
Shame on Igoche
Shane on Buhari
So so painful!
Now they are hailing the disaster they brought on themselves. Someone was meeting target with the team, but they were shouting as if their team is so strong and could win world cup.
Mexico that rang ring around us was whitewashed by Uruguay 3:0.
And now omonaija and his crew was having confidence in they new coach because he is boastful while they hated the realist Rhor who made us seem they best football country in the world.
Same in all of you.
Nigeria have not won a friendly match since 2019. Drawn 5 and lost 6. Bulk of the results came from your man that met all the targets. Targets indeed.
chidera ejuke samuel kalu kinsley michael and yusuf hassan coupled with those ones that was conspicuously absent due to one thing or the other the likes of ndidi lookman chukwueze balogun nwobodo the team is good to go
To me, sacking Rohr was a mistake,even eagles under eguavon could have done better in the two friendlies…The super are overated which means they will still fumble under the best coach..
Pinnick has started praising failure again. That was how he praised Austin Equaveon until he could not qualify us for the world cup. Please stop praising failure and give us result.
Amaju Pinnick’s statement is somewhat baseless and disingenuous because it dilutes and attempts to distort the brutal reality.
“We lost both games against Mexico and Ecuador narrowly but we were up for it and never finished on the back foot.” Amaju Pinnick.
In fairness, when the Eguavoen-tutored Super Eagles lost to Tunisia in the Afcon second round in January, Nigeria didn’t finish on the back foot. The players kept attacking until the end with Sadiq Umar coming a whisker away from equalising in the dying ashes of the game.
Also, against Ghana, it has to be recalled that the Super Eagles were undefeated across 2 legs with Osimhen twice going close to settling the tie in favour of Nigeria in Abuja. However inadequate Eguavoen’s formation was, the players never stopped battling.
My point: nothing much has changed between these friendly matches in Abuja and the two fixtures (1 home and away) that curtailed Nigeria’s Afcon and world cup objectives.
The common denominator is that we are not winning: we lost in the Afcon, we lost world cup ticket and we lost both friendlies.
However, the silver lining behind the American friendlies cloud is that the Super Eagles showed signs of a team that can improve. They were massively depleted for these with many notable and on-field influential players missing.
When these player – like Osimhen, Lookman, Awoniyi, Zaidu, Balogun, Ndah etc – return, Nigeria should be a decent outfit under Peseiro (hopefully).
But there is no masking the grim reality, however Pinnick might use fancy words to dress it: Nigeria hasn’t won a single match in five games. This is demoralising for fans.
This is not to blame Peseiro, but to say we are not where we want to be as the Super Eagles family. One a good day, we usually share the spoils with Mexico while we should really be defeating Ecuador by a slim margin.
Pinnick and other powerful stakeholders should allow Peseiro free reign in draining the failure swamp that the Super Eagles are currently flailing in.
Mercifully he has time. Should the Super Eagles face Mexico and Ecuador in February next year, for example, I will expect a different more favourable set of outcomes and I will scrutinise Peseiro more sternly.
But for now, he has done that badly. He has already introduced his own formula, formation and tactical approach that opened up Ecuador and Mexico on occasions.
The positional discipline is there and the potential for attacking football is bountiful. With more precision in front and greater focus at the back, these 2 games could have ended in draws.
But nearly never kills a bird, football is a results business and we Super Eagles fans want results, and fast!
Correction :
But for now, he has NOT done that badly. He has already introduced his own formula, formation and tactical approach that opened up Ecuador and Mexico on occasions.
I nearly kill a bird, yes, but where is it?
Nice one Deo.
To me, Eguaveon shot himself on the foot against Ghana (especially the return leg).
I’m sure he’s biting his fingers by now.
John-I Eguavoen lost his nerves in Abuja. Of the 3 matches that sealed his fate, it was the Abuja match that inflicted on the most severe and penetrative death nail.
He got it all wrong and his inability to adapt was punished ruthlessly and comprehensively by the Ghana coach in the second half.
A vast majority of Nigeria fans would easily give Eguavoen 3/5 for the Kumasi performance and 2.5/5 for the Tunisia game despite the loss. Owing to the fact that we were even playing at home, I would give him 1/5 for the Abuja game and that was me being generous!
Hahahahaha…Egua-diola the serial failure…..LMAOooo. Egua-diola the gallery dancer.
He was so much in a hurry to become a fans favorite and started dancing to the tune of clueless people posing as bibliographies of football knowledge….LMAoooo.
Tactically daft and technically dumb Technical Director who subbed half of a team that pulled a draw at the dreaded Kumasi stadium for new comers who were just making their first starts in national team colours in a make-and-mar winner-takes-all match against our most eternally bitter rivals in the heat and humidity of Abuja….whereas the sensible and high quality coaches of our opponents stuck to THE SAME 11 that couldnt win on home soil, because the knew something as basic as the place of chemistry in football.
Many thanks to Eguavoen, we are now toys teams that will be going to the World cup are using to sharpen their own skills ahead of the mundial.
I think the key to progress is MORE PRECISION IN FRONT, as Deo mentioned.
All our players need to take on more goalscoring responsibility. Shots at goal should increase in QUANTITY AND QUALITY, and our strikers should be more ruthless in front of goal. They should endeavor to convert more of the chances that come their way.
Goalies will make mistakes, defenders will make mistakes, strikers will miss chances. Errors are a normal part of the game. However, the difference between a top side and a mediocre side is that a top side will take advantage of a good portion of their scoring chances, thereby negating any damage caused by errors.
Teams like Man City and Liverpool make mistakes, but they will convert 1 or 2 out of every 5 chances they get. When you do that consistently, you win games, in spite of your errors.
For instance, if Nigeria had taken some of the chances we had against Tunisia and Ghana, we would have done better at the Afcon, and would likely have booked our ticket to Qatar.
If we had taken our chances against Mexico and Ecuador, we likely would have won both games.
It is when you fail to take any of your chances, when goalscoring becomes a CHRONIC PROBLEM, that is when errors that should not be costing us too much, end up doing just that. An error by Uzoho denies us the world cup ticket, when our strikers could have bailed us out by taking some of the chances that came their way!
When we solve this CHRONIC GOALSCORING PROBLEM, and start converting a minimum of 25% of the chances we create, which is one out of every four chances, I’m convinced we will do much better.
Yea, you have fulfilled your objectives, one of which has clearly shown once again that your extravagantly talented home-based players cant and shouldnt make this super eagles for now, and that’s a sad piece of fact….maybe till when we start seeing them matching the likes of Wydad, Alahly, TP Mazembe and the rest man-for-man on the continent, first and foremost.
Enough of the charade called home-based quota. The SE came into US with 12 foreign based and 8 home-based players, and under the watchful eyes of a new set of coaches, not even 1, I mean 1 of 8 of them could rightly earn a starters shirt, save for when there is a fitness crisis. And when that 1 eventually did, just like others before him, he failed with flying colours.
Who the hell are we deceiving….? Peserio wasn’t stupid to have lined up all 11 foreign based players at the start of the Mexico game and would have done so again if there was adequate cover for the Ecuador game. I bet if he had more FB substitutes, they would still have played as subs ahead of the so-called “talented” home-based.
The SE camp is not a “center for encouragement and confidence building”, its a place where the best we have come to slug it out. The home-based players should go and encourage themselves in the CHAN, CAF CL and CAF CC season after season first, before coming to look for encouragement in the SE camp. Morocco has won the CHAN back to back, Moroccan clubs are winning CAF club cups ALMSOT EVERY YEAR for the last 5 years, but they played USA in a friendly 2 days ago and ALL 23 players BUT 1 goalkeeper was home-based. That’s a country that has a proper, competitive, high standard league o, yet not reserving quotas for any body. But we that cannot comfortably produce 2 (or even 1) team in the group stages of CAF competitions year-in-year out on a consistent and constant basis want to foist and force them into our national team and shut out better players because of our stupidity and usual character of celebrating mediocrity and putting the cart before the horse most of the times.
I still cant wrap my head around the fact that we wasted 8 slots to test better players in Europe on these so-called “talents”. Talent has levels….these ones are talented for the local NPFL level where they operate….not at international level.
We should set and get our priorities right. No be only us get “talent” for our league for the whole Africa.
Thank you once again Pinnick, for helping us confirm what we have always known for a long long time now
“Morocco has won the CHAN back to back, Moroccan clubs are winning CAF club cups ALMSOT EVERY YEAR for the last 5 years, but they played USA in a friendly 2 days ago and ALL 23 players BUT 1 goalkeeper was home-based.”
And yet Morocco lost 3-0 to the US that was fielding 5 foreign-based players. If Nigeria home-based cannot beat Morocco then what chance do they have against other teams fielding foreign-based players. Salisu Yusuf organised a home-based team against Mexico a few years ago. What Happened? They trashed Nigeria 4-0.
John-I Eguavoen lost his nerves in Abuja. Of the 3 matches that sealed his fate, it was the Abuja match that inflicted on the most severe and penetrative death nail.
He got it all wrong and his inability to adapt was punished ruthlessly and comprehensively by the Ghana coach in the second half.
A vast majority of Nigeria fans would easily give Eguavoen 3/5 for the Kumasi performance and 2.5/5 for the Tunisia game despite the loss. Owing to the fact that we were even playing at home, I would give him 1/5 for the Abuja game and that was me being generous!
We’re genuinely lacking goal scorers and tenacious forwards like the days of Yekini and Amokachi or even Siaone. Moffi shows why he was dropped for Osimhen at the U17 level. He has the built but lacks the dexterity and stamina to withstand physical Oppositions. Osimhen with his slim look would have been a perfect partner for Dessers. The less said about Dessers too the better. He has a massive opportunity to stake a claim to the top striker jersey but fluffed two sitters that even he won’t believe he didn’t convert at least one of those chances. Awoniyi and Sadiq will be salivating on those missed chances not to talk of Osimhen or Iheanacho.
Aribo and Iwobi midfield combo created over 10 chances in the two games we played and we are complaining about creative midfielders??? With a fit Ndidi behind them they will be a delight to watch going forward if they can stay consistent for once.
Ekong and Ajayi combo in central defense looks good and they seems to be developing a chemistry. As for the home based players I was only impressed by the Ishak guy. Maybe they will use the experience in their CHAN qualifiers coming up. I hope some other players can still come to join the team for the qualifiers. We really need to take Sierra Leone seriously this time.
I watch the match and I can say they tried do you think it is easy to play a south american team,sometimes give credit where it is due,they play with purpose and intent unlike our last 3 matches wen eguaveon was there and also remember we are missing some of players,if u don’t watch go check the stat
Come on Edoms, South Americans are humans just like you.
@Edoman, yes they are humans but they are certainly not an easy side…if you watch the match you will know the super eagle brought the game to them to me it is not the result but how they played with purpose if not for the referee that denied us a clear penalty or desser failing to take is chances we could have won the game…so it is not the coach fault bcos to me he is working with what i saw this morning
Guys stop stressing yourselves, nothing works in that country again, Nigeria is a failed a doomed country, by the way Pinnick will praise failure because his getting a kickback from the guy salary. From jihadist Buhari to corrupt Pinnick these goons don’t care about super eagles, see what Ghana is doing with their young team.
Everybody should go get their PVC so we can bring in PETER OBI for things to START WORKING again
*In this COUNTRY*
@ Monkey Post, who is Peter Obi sir?
PETER OBI is a FORMER COACH of WEST HAM