Nigeria had a shit performance against Bafana Bafana. Though it was obvious that the South Africans came for a draw, not a win, starting from providing us with bad pitches. But again, if you draw against Zimbabwe and Lesotho, you have no relationship with the World Cup except if you want to disgrace yourself. The only people I feel for are Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman.
I would like to talk about the Nigerian coach, Eric Chelle, starting Ekong, whom he benched in the last game, changing our backline. Aside from that, he started Moses Simon on the left and then played Ademola Lookman, our African best left winger, like a midfielder. But honestly, I am not here to talk about the coach, at least not yet. Let’s start with the set of players whom I believe shouldn’t be allowed to start for the Super Eagles, at least for now, as their forms have dropped.
Firstly, as much as we all respect our captain William Troost-Ekong, benching him in favor of Benjamin Fredrick was the best decision the coach made last week, and he has not made many good decisions. Now, in a crucial qualifying match, he decided to start Ekong, which was one of the reasons for the Zimbabwe fiasco and also caused an own goal against South Africa. Though honestly, the goal was no fault of his, he is better off coming off the bench.
Let’s talk about Moses Simon. Firstly, you can’t bench Ademola Lookman for Moses Simon. But you also can’t start a match with two left wingers while leaving the right wing dry. Simon has no business starting — at least tactically — and even from an eye test, because most of our attacking balls came through him and were wasted. This is not on Simon but on the coach.
Another player who shouldn’t be in the starting XI is Cyril Dessers. It was shocking that the coach favored Dessers over Tolu Arokorade to replace the injured Osimhen. Yes, we have always advocated for Dessers to be included in the national team ahead of guys like Boniface or Sodiq Umar. But since we had someone more fit for tiki-taka football, which is Tolu, or even both could have started, the decision made no sense.
Then last but not least is Wilfred Ndidi. Starting two DMs in a must-win match is really crazy, especially when you have a must-win game knowing South Africa came to draw.
Lastly, overhaul this entire team, including the coach. These players can’t function without Victor Osimhen. If Victor hadn’t fallen to that injury, Nigeria would have won because of the crosses sent into the box in the first 45 minutes. And of course, there’s no way the coach would have started Dessers ahead of Osimhen, so we wouldn’t have made the mistake of thinking of Tolu as a super sub.
One more before I go: Eric Chelle is not the right man for the job. Maybe the Super Eagles need to beg Gernot Rohr to leave the Benin Republic job and come back to save Nigeria. At least during his time, we were playing like a team.