I may not believe in the new coach of the Super Eagles, George Finidi, I pray for his success. He should go in there and prove me wrong.
His two friendlies against Ghana and Mali showed that he is set to launch attacking football but with a less creative midfield.
He should sit back and work more on a technic that can suit this tactical formation.
Against Ghana and Mali, Finidi dropped Jose Peseiro’s 3-4-3 formation that earned Nigeria 5 victories out of the six matches it played at the AFCON 2023 to win silver.
He used 3-5-2 against the two West Africans, defeating Ghana by 2-1 and losing to Mali 0-2.
It was obvious that the Mali bench had studied Finidi against Ghana as it capitalised on his loopholes to beat Super Eagles with two goals.
Of course the Super Eagles dominated the possession, there were no creative midfielders that could throw penetrating passes to the strikers upfront.
The Super Eagles scored their first goal against Ghana from the penalty spot and capitalised on the disorganised Black Stars to double the lead.
It was not that the team actually created bright chances to secure the victory against Ghana. Mali saw this and cut out the Eagles midfield and attack.
The players were just passing the balls for the duration of the game. As a matter of fact, they recorded zero shot on target.
This is unlike any Super Eagles squad to have zero shot on target for 90 minutes against an African team. For me this is a NO.
Before Peseiro went to African Cup of Nation, only a few people had given him any chance. He had got good technics with quality players to exhibit it but his formation was always a disaster.
However, he changed his formation after the first match against Guinea Bissau to 3-4-3 and with the right players to execute his plans of long passes over the midfield, he relieved his defenders off pressure, thus creating chances for the attackers.
Nigeria created the highest number of chances at the AFCON 2023, records are there to check and it was due to Peseiro’s tactical formation.
He knew that Nigeria had no creative midfielders and the only antidote was to jam-pack the midfield as a wall against the opposing team.
This is where Finidi must learn about tactics and technics. No coach will come up with a particular formation if he does not have the quality of players that can exhibit his technics.
In the days of Clement Westerhof, the midfield had Austin Okocha, Samson Siasia, Mutiu Adepoju, Sunday Oliseh who had different styles of play. It made it easy for the Dutch to improvise and change his technics without necessarily changing his formation.
How many of this class of players are in the present Eagles, perhaps zero. Wilfred Ndidi who would have been a figure in the midfield is prone to injury.
The world knows that Nigeria is blessed with strong attackers in Victor Osimhen and Victor Boniface, these two can be rendered useless without creative passers in the midfield as it happened at the last AFCON where Osimhen could only score one goal.
My prayer is for Finidi to prove me wrong and this can only happen if he get answers to these two questions;
(1) How flexible are his tactical formations?
(2) Will the tactics and technics agree with the quality of the players to exhibit it?
(3) How deep is his knowledge of match reading and capacity to change things to stabilise the game?
The inability of Peseiro to blend his tactics with his technics when Cote d’Ivoire came with new idea at the AFCON final killed Nigeria’s dream of lifting the cup for the fourth time.
He substituted the players without checking their psychology at that period, which of course made the players to play deeper and concede late goal.
That was exactly what happens to Finidi against Mali when he made ineffective substitution. It speaks volumes of his tactical depth.
However he has one advantage in that he has involved in our local league and can pick a few hungry players as done by late Stephen Keshi.
The question still remains, can he blend the local and foreign to get result.
By Kunle Awosiyan
