The Super Eagles were knocked out of the AFCON horrendously on Sunday, but going forward, the boss believes a few improvements could make the team stronger
Super Eagles boss Augustine Eguavoen has revealed that the Super Eagles need to improve on their finishing and transition from defence to attack.
Nigeria were sent packing out of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon after their 1-0 defeat to the Carthage Eagles of Tunisia on Sunday.
Some dodgy goalkeeping from Maduka Okoye, who misjudged the flight of Msakni's speculative shot, gave the Tunisians the lead minutes after the break.
The Super Eagles were further deflated after Alex Iwobi got red-carded for a poor foul barely five minutes after his introduction to the game.
However, the game brought to bear the weaknesses of the Super Eagles in the tournament. The three-time AFCON kings were wasteful in front of goal, creating many chances but failing to convert them.
Also, asides from Moses Simon, there has been no other major outlet in attack, which came to the fore on Sunday night.
Eguavoen believes that the team would be stronger if the Super Eagles could sort out their finishing issues and move the ball quicker.
“It's just scoring goals because we are creating chances, and we are not scoring them,” Eguavoen told OJB sports.
“So if we work on that, and our transition a little bit quicker from defending to offensive, those are our two weak areas.”
The next focus for the Super Eagles is the crucial World Cup qualifier against Ghana in March.
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The Battle Of The Eagles.
The Nigerian super eagle may have the better players on paper but the Tunisian have the better team thanks to their technical crew, they really did a great work on the super eagle.
While Agustin Eguavon led team was carried away with the results gotten from the group stage, the Tunisian national team went back to their drawing board which really paid off. Agustin Eguavon and his technical crew were totally outclass by their Tunisian counterparts. The north African side noticed the movement of our players, what they did was to cutout the supplies, them press on. With the way they played you can tell that they even made provision for extra time, they were ready for any outcome.
No disrespect to Agustin Eguavon and his technical crew, but I think they failed. First half was enough time for them to have made the difference, I expected Eguavon to have come with two new changes immidiately, Iwobe for Chikwueze who really do not deserve a starting place in this team, Frank Onyeaka for Awoniyi, allowing Kelechi Iheanacho as a false number 9. While Joe Aribo move to the number 10 position and Iwobe and Simon to the right & left side of attack with 4:3:3 formation, thanks to the vasertality of Aribo and Iwobe who can easily switch position.
Frank Onyeaka with Ndidi would have been an added advantage to the middle, it would have saved our defense from that extra pressure because they are a bit jittery.
So, thank God the NFF still have a large space the in our drawing board, I beg this time they go with coaches that can read the game and offer solutions on the way forward.
We are all sad that we were knocked out but try not to be the better coach.
In football, so many things happens on the pitch and off it. We as fans rarely know s about what happens off the pitch like in the training sessions which is a big factor for the coaching crew determining who would play and so on.
Had he made a change to the first choice, you will say you “don’t change a winning team”.
The Coaches are always in the first line of blame.
He said according to the above report, that we failed to utilized our chances. If you watch the matches played, I completely agree. People who have football knowledge would agree creating chances is one of the hardest things to do in a game. In difficult games, chances are rare. Those that need fewer chances to score often comes out victorious.
He just outlined the problems which I believe are accurate. We will be better off to work on them.
This observation is absolutely right, the attacking transition by the Eagles is very slow , they created chances that were never converted.
Another observation is that there was no ball carrying midfielder in the middle of our attack, we rely on wing play which is the identity of our national team, but unfortunately the Tunisian must have watched our three previous games countless times and were able to analyse our system of playing.
We must move beyond this game and prepare the team for the next competition.
The red card was not supposed to be therefore Alex Iwobi should not be blamed for it, he went for the ball and he did get the ball but unfortunately his boot stepped on the Tunisian which was accidentall. Such officiating is a problem with African football.
We must congratate the boys and encourage them for future games.
Algeria was eliminated im the first round.