Portugal Humiliate Super Eagles 4-0 In Lisbon Friendly Clash

Do you know the difference between Nigeria and Portugal? Passing and Movement. The typical Nigerian player will always take more touches on the ball than necessary. The true art of a passing game in football is misdirection. This is what a magician does when he makes you look in one direction so that he can make something disappear.

You see the human mind is slow to regain concentration when it is made to look in one direction and then the opposite. From their passing and movement, Portugal know this while Nigerian players seem not to understand this. How do you implement misdirection in football? It is based on a triangle arrangement where one player passes in one direction to another player who takes only one touch to pass to a third.

Another way of misdirection is to concentrate play in on one side of the pitch and then swing the ball with a long pass to the other. This was how Portugal scored their first goal, while – in the 1st half, none of Bassey, Iwobi or Simon had the sense to switch the ball to the right for Lookman or Bright to progress the attack. Instead, they kept concentrating play on the left, hoping that Simon would dribble through.

The second passing trick is “passing between pillars”, two opposition players approaching a player with the ball act as the pillars, he passes the ball between the ‘pillars’ i.e. between the two players because he knows his team mates would always position themselves to receive the ball between two players. When “passing between pillars” is ingrained into a team the man on the ball will always intuitively know where to pass the ball.

In this match, Ekong is too slow and slows down the game, so that it becomes a game of back passing. I thought his experience would be useful in organising the defence, the problem is that he thinks because he is captain that his task is to dictate the rhythm of the game to his own slow pace.

Aribo is not a midfielder, I don’t know what he is but in midfield he does not have the range of passes, he does not distribute the ball, he is not a ball winner and rarely carries the ball into the opposition half. He plays short passes in the centre of the pitch that are most often back passes.
Simon would be a better player if he inverted, that is if he stopped positioning himself on the touchline and moved more towards the centre to allow the fullback to overlap. In my view the way Simon plays on the wings is a waste of his talent.

This match was worse than the Algeria match and of course the Sao Tome and Principe match and a return to the Eguavoen era and the two players absent for those two matches Aribo and Ekong were the negative difference.

Chukwueze is in my view a selfish player that takes more touches on the ball than necessary. He had two opportunities, the first was stamped out because of his lack of urgency in not passing the ball with one touch, the second was when he found himself in on goal with just the keeper to beat, and could have laid the ball for Onuachu to score.

Bright played well and was probably our best player, Bassey played okay – the problem I have with Bassey is that he thinks he is more skilful on the ball than he actually is, this causes him to make mistakes which can be deadly (as Ajax found out). Akpoguma was also competent.
I can’t even remember Ndidi on the pitch, and the way the Portuguese midfield players dominated especially in the 1st half was an indictment on his performance. Iwobi tried, but I felt Aribo was just getting in his way. Lookman and Moffi received very little service so I can’t blame them for their performance.
Tactics and selection was the coach’s doing, so I’m blaming the coach for this shameful result. Who told him to invite Dennis? There are certain players whose selfish attitudes can ruin a team, the coach chose a lot of selfish players in his squad. I hopeb he learns from this, but if I see Ekong and Aribo in his starting line I’m not going to bother watching.

Until some fans learn to tone down the high expectations they place on these players, they will continue to be sorely disappointed and frustrated. So much hype on majority of players whose shortcomings are covered up by the tactically disciplined players in their various clubs. As soon as they get together, they get exposed.
Tha last truly world-class team that Nigeria had, was the 1994 team.
And guess what, Mr. Augustine Eguavoen was a key member of that team from start to finish.
As the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, England expects everyone to do his duty, thank God, I have done mine.” Mr. Eguavoen can hold his head high having served his country well from the 1988 Olympics to the 1992 and 1994 Nations Cup where he captained the team to win The Cup for Nigeria and to our first ever-World Cup qualification and participation where he was present all-through.
It is now left for his restive critics to list their contributions to the development of Nigeria.

Disappointing day for Nigerians. WHICH KAIN WOTOWOTO BE DIS NA?
Anyway, we will bounce back. We just need to do things right.
Last week, our team Q against a world cup team. This week, we’re playing a world cup favorite on their home turf! Haba! We like suffering sha!
Some thought process needs to occur before we accept to play friendlies. Not every war is worth fighting.
Lightweight boxer that wants to spar with heavy weight, no be wotowoto em dey find so?
Additionally, we need a paradigm shift in our way of playing. The traditional Nigerian way is gung-ho. Adventurous, without much regard for caution. Attack, attack, attack. It works great against inferior teams, but doesn’t work when we meet well drilled, defensively organized sides. We need to strike a balance between our adventurous nature and a cautious, pragmatic approach. If we had been more cautious against Italy in 1994, we would have qualified for the quarter final. And that SE team could very well have made it to the final, and then anything could have happened. Instead of managing the game, we kept attacking Italy, leaving gaps behind for Baggio and company to exploit, and we paid a heavy price.
Ghana have the same problem, but in the opposite direction. They are solid defensively, but not adventurous enough going forward. Which is why their trophy cabinet has been empty for so long. They had no business losing that quarter final against Uruguay. But allowed Uruguay to come back, and win a game that Ghana should have bagged.
Traditionally, a solid defensive strategy usually trumps an attacking strategy, which is why we continue to struggle against Ghana and other good defensive sides. We’ve got to do things differently.
Mental fortitude, discipline, and caution must balance out our adventurous, attacking nature.
One of the biggest things Pese can add to this team is game management. With good game management, an inferior side can compete well with a superior side. Without good game management, everything goes helter skelter. The last 2 Portugal goals today had no business in our net, with proper game management.