What Will Super Eagles Do Without Luck?

By Kunle Awosiyan

The three Super Eagles’ games at the preliminaries of the 2023 AFCON have shown the role of luck in football.

If luck continues to smile at the team, Nigeria will reach the final and win this trophy for the fourth time, otherwise, it will be booted out of the competition by a more or less organised team on Saturday.

Super Eagles have lacked the clinical touches inside the 18 yard box of its opponents so far in this tournament.

A team that is rated as a strong contender for the cup has depended more on luck than implementing its gameplan for success.

The now table topper of group A, Equatorial Guinea, could not hold the Eagles quality attack in its first game but Nigeria failed to convert the begging chances.

Playing a draw with Nigeria in a way gave the Central African the “I can do” spirit that made it to beat the Guinea Bissau 4-2 and the host nation Cote d’Ivoire 4-0.

In 2013, after playing two draws in the preliminaries, Super Eagles went on to defeat Cote D’Ivoire 2-1 and Mali 4-1 to reach the final and win it for the third time.

The 2013 team had lesser quality compared to what we have now, yet it won the AFCON because of its efficiency.

It utilised its slightest chances, including the final against Burkina Faso in which it created few chances against the West African brothers.

The present team is wasteful and I won’t want to put all the blame on Victor Osimhen whom ordinarily should be tormenting the opponents’ defence but had turned to both an attacker and defender.

No doubt, Osimhen had missed begging chances but then he had not been fed with accurate passes.

What is critically lacking in the present squad is a ball passer. No good passer, except Ademola Lookman whom I think the coach should improvise to service that position effectively instead of Alex Iwobi.

Iwobi who should play this role does too much of rehearsal on the ball, making it easy for opponents to destabilise him. He loses ball easily.

One can easily predict the direction of Iwobi’s passes compared to Austin Okocha, his uncle’s ingenuity of curling, “Gba bi ma Gbe be” kind of passes.

In 1994 alone, Nigeria had Okocha, Sunday Olise, Mutiu Adepoju, Samson Siasia as passers of ball and potential goal scorers in their own right.

In 2013, Nigeria had John Mikel Obi whose passes did not only wreck havoc on opposing teams but took out the tournament’s favourite, Cote D’Ivoire apart.

This present team has enjoyed so much luck in its last three games with one penalty goal against Cote D’Ivoire, one own goal by Guinea Bissau and a goal against Equatorial Guinea to move to the second round.

This is unlike Nigeria and it is coming at a time the best player in Africa is a Nigerian who is also in the squad. Perhaps the coach should start Osimhen from the bench in the next match so that he can rediscover his form and score some good goals.

The time is now when Nigeria must begin to score goals, judging by the quality of its attack. It sounds so irritating that the three forwards, Osimhen of Napoli, Lookman of Atalanta and Samuel Chukwueze of AC Milan are finding it difficult to score goals freely and replicate their club form for Nigeria.

In the game against Guinea Bissau, I observed that our backline was not as organised as it was against Cote D’Ivoire, perhaps because of the absence of Williams Troost Ekong.

For me Kenneth Omeruo did not do well in that position and I suggest his exit from Super Eagles after the 2023 AFCON.

Again, the officiating was so poor.
The Moroccan referee, Bouchra Karboubi gave us a terrible match.