Tactical dexterity The strength of Jose Mourinho of Chelsea, the highest paid coach in the world, is in reading the game. This ensures that Mourinho’s second half is often a revelation to his first half. Arsenal will always have a problem playing against Chelsea in the EPL because Mourinho is a better reader of the game than Arsene Wenger. This league season, Liverpool was a better team than Chelsea. Nevertheless, Liverpool lost 2-0 to Chelsea because Mourinho outfoxed Liverpool’s Brendan Rodgers. You can also tell the dexterity of a coach by the substitutions he makes during a game. With the world-class coaches, their substitutions immediately change the game. None of these skills are evident in Stephen Keshi. His current team is inadequate even at the basic level. The Super Eagles are predictable. They lack speed, match-stamina, ball-possession, accurate passing and clinical finishing. Keshi is a tactically deficient coach. A seasoned coach would have a field-day exploiting Nigeria’s tactical deficiencies. The ball is easily won from us and then we have a problem retrieving it. We have a problem penetrating our opponents’ defenses. We don’t seem to have strikers hungry for goals. Because our recovery from a failed attack is often slow, we are highly vulnerable to fast counter-attacks. Lethargic players Nigeria’s players are not driven and motivated. We play as if nothing is at stake. Our defense is lethargic and flat-footed. Captain Joseph Yobo is way past his prime. Against the United States, American strikers easily danced around him. Jozy Altidore only managed to score one goal for Sunderland throughout the entirety of the last EPL season. But playing for the United States, he was too much for the Nigeria’s lackluster defenders. Jurgen Klinsmann discovered that there was a gaping hole in the left flank of the Nigerian defense. As a result, journeyman Altidore became a local hero, scoring two dazzling goals against Nigeria. If he could do this, I wonder what to expect from Edin Dzeko and Vedad Ibisevic of Bosnia Herzegovina. I shudder what Lionel Messi and Kun Aguero of Argentina would do to us. If not for the fact that Nigeria has in Vincent Enyeama, one of the best gold-keepers in the world; some of the matches we played recently would have ended up as goal fiestas against Nigeria. Our mid-field lacks creativity. The players are experts in back-passing the ball. They run up and down with little inventiveness as to how to open up the opposition’s defense. Mikel runs like a spider with the ball with little intention to go forward. He is one midfield player who never scores goals. Even during set-pieces, he lacks ambition and will hardly approach the opposition’s eighteen. Our attacking line-up lacks bite. The players seem bereft of innovative goal-scoring ideas. They are easily shut out of the game. Speed and dynamism are the hallmarks of today’s football. That indeed was the distinguishing feature of our World Cup winning Junior Eagles. We have already seen this in evidence in this World Cup, which has already become a goal-scoring extravaganza. However, the Super Eagles lack pace and speed. Their attacking system relies on a slow build-up, ensuring that the opposition easily decodes their intentions a mile off. Only Victor Moses seems inclined to carry attacks into the opposition’s penalty box. 2018 World Cup What needs to be done? It is too late for this World Cup. But immediately thereafter, Nigeria needs to get a world-class football coach. There is no room for misguided nationalism here. Luiz Scolari is Brazilian; nevertheless, he coached the Portuguese national team. Fabio Capello is Italian; nevertheless he coached the British national team. It is not about being nationalistically pig-headed. It is about insisting only the best is good enough for Nigeria. Coaches like Keshi may be good enough to get Nigeria to win the African Cup. But they are not good enough to take us to the World Cup. They don’t have what it takes to tactically outsmart maestros like Germany’s Joachim Low or Spain’s Vicente Del Bosque. That should remain the enduring lesson of this World Cup, after our cookies have crumbled....by femi aribisala
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 09:53:38 +0000
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