Monday 24 June 2013

Nigeria 0-3 Spain: The Super Eagles crash out │ Mikel Obi too critical

Poor finishing 
The Super Eagles were sent packing from the confederations cup yesterday night after losing to world champions Spain. Honestly, any Nigerian supporter expecting the Super Eagles to defy the odds and qualify after their defeat against Uruguay was bound to be disappointed.
In a game of such importance, you'd expect the boys to be fully focused from the first minute but that wasn't the case as Spain were allowed too much freedom from the beginning. Iniesta was the first to test Enyeama  after going past the Nigerian defense with ease.
The Nigerians didn't take that as a warning and they let Jordi Alba get past three of them to coolly slot the ball in to the bottom corner.
We quickly got back to life after conceding and began to cause the Spaniards problems. Sunday Mba tested Valdes with a stinging drive after getting on the end of a rare Brown Ideye pass.
With some few minutes before the half time whistle, We put our foot off the gas, allowing the Spaniards numerous chances to extend their lead. Soldado failed to score on two occasions as Enyeama did well to deny him while Fabregas sent an effort crashing against the post, luckily for us Enyeama was able to gather.
The second half saw more horrible finishing from the Super Eagles as Musa got down the right flank and squared the ball in to the path of Ideye who contrived to  completely miss the ball. Soon after, the Spaniards scored a second goal courtesy of substitutes Silva and Torres who sent a flying head in to the net as a move left the Nigerian defense static.
There was still time for some shocking finishing from the Nigerian strikers as Musa and substitute Gambo wasted chances to get at least a consolation goal for their team.
Jordi Alba though, had enough of this wastefulness. He received a long pass from Silva and    had only the keeper to beat which he did quite easily slotting the ball in to an empty net.
As the referee blew the final whistle, Spain and Uruguay (After thrashing Tahiti) 8-0 are the teams to advance in the competition.
Mikel Obi played well in midfield, making tackles and often going on slaloming runs. After the match he said:
“We came out to defeat the Spanish side and I think we may have even had the better possession against the World Champions but we simply did not take our chances and they took theirs, so we paid for our mistakes and are now heading out of the championship."
I don't think there was any point in the game where Nigeria had more possession. The least possession of the ball the Spaniards had during the match was 54%.
They also had 17 shots on target compared to our 8. So we shouldn't put the blame entirely on our strikers' inability to put the ball in the back of the net.
Even though they should have done a lot better, they were playing a team that have gone 24 games undefeated. Like somebody said yesterday that it was 8 Barcelona players, 2 Real Madrid players against the Nigerians.
Steven Keshi must ensure that lessons have been learned and work on doing better in the World cup finals next year.

 
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