Yesterday, Super Eagles coach, Finidi George, proved me right with the poor performance of the Super Eagles against Benin Republic in Abidjan.
Even though I knew he could not deliver on this assignment I had prayed for him to prove me wrong so that the Super Eagles could qualify.
A coach like Finidi shouldn’t have experimented his low capacity with the senior national team. He should have started with any of the country’s age grade teams as a builder instead of leading the Eagles where some of the players are at the peak of their career.
Nine African teams will be going to the next world cup and it’s unfortunate that Nigeria may not be part of them. We are not ready, we are still building a team and recording positives.
As a matter of fact, some of the players he paraded yesterday would have lost form in another four years. A coach like Finidi has no capacity for a rescue mission that Nigeria needed after the exit of Jose Peseiro.
Except that the job of Finidi is to build a new generation of players, he has no business in coaching these present crop of players because he lacks the capacity to quickly blend them together for world cup qualification.
He has shown in less than a week that he can not read match and has not got the tactical ability to control a game. His players, despite their quality played aimlessly with no formation, wrong passes from back to front. They also lost ball easily. Too bad to see Nigeria display such a kindergarten skills on the pitch yesterday.
On Tuesday, Super Eagles scored first against the Beninese but could not build on the spike after Gernot Rohr, the Benin Coach quickly changed his own tactics.
Rohr noticed that the Eagles defence was not coordinated, he instructed his boys to throw the ball into the Eagles box, which resulted into two quick goals.
I have asked who is Benjamin Tanimu in our defence? Where is he playing and where had he played. Surprisingly, the guy plays in Tanzania, one of the lowest league in Aftica after he left Bendel Insurance.
He may be a talented player, fine, he does not understand the chemistry that made the solid defence of the Super Eagles we saw at the last AFCON where Peseiro paraded William Troost-Ekong, Ola Aina, Kenneth Omeruo and Chigozie Awaziem.
Before the two matches that Findi prosecuted, Ekong said he was available but he was never invited. I have not read anywhere that Aina is injured. And for Omeruo and Awaziem whom Finidi invited, the two sat on bench. He left those who new the chemistry out of the match to experiment a new defence line and Nigeria really suffered for it.
The Beninese team did not create any good chance at all. The chances fell on them because there was no chemistry in our defence and they used it to nail the Super Eagles.
Having noticed Rohr’s idea, I had expected Finidi to also change tactics but our man became a spectator, substituting and deforming his earlier formation.
If the job of Finidi is to build a team, then we should forget about world cup and African Cup of Nation for now and let him continue to test all the players until we will get a good team, perhaps in five years but if it’s about qualification, Finidi should be booted out now.
Yesterday’s match was irritating. The players are overrated. The manager is a rookie. We played against a bad Benin team, yet they beat us.
Terrible, terrible, terrible
By Kunle Awosiyan
