So How Did The Pharaohs Then Have The Upper Hand Over The Super Eagles?

The Egyptians were clearly more tactically discipline in seizing the chances they got. Our Super Eagles should learn to take their chances when they comes. This team needs a strike force (i.e. strikers) of extremely high efficiency. Strikers that score one out of one chance, or even half a chance. That is what produced Nigeria’s only goal in this match midway into the first half by Chinedu Obasi. That was Nigeria’s first real foray into the Egyptian defence. Obasi ran on the Egyptian defense, created his first shooting opportunity and fired his canon into the Egyptian net corner. It was a really beautiful goal.

The Eagles made other shooting chances, but the shooters were shooting poorly, the worst culprit being Kalu Uche (he had two shooting chances which he wasted wide on both occasions). This is the problem with the Super Eagles, they make many chances, but score few goals, in short, they have not got the high efficiency that is required in modern football, modern football is not your possession, it is your efficiency in goalscoring. But the Egyptians were wiser, they would always seize theirs when it showed up, because you don’t know when another would come.

The Super Eagles Remain Weak Toward Counter-Attacks

Nigeria’s lost goal resulted in the Egyptian scored goal. Nigeria made an attack foray into the Egyptian area, resulting in a shooting chance for Kalu Uche, he blasted wide. Before you know what was going on, within split seconds, the keeper played the goalkick to his midfield player, the player sent the ball straight to Meteeb who easily beat Yobo’s off-side trap, beat Enyeama the keeper, and slot the ball into an empty net. It was so fast that the whole super Eagles midfield, defence and goalkeeper were caught absolute napping. Even the camera people too because they were still showing Kalu’s miss when Meteeb was dribbling past Enyeama. That is the level of tactical discipline of the Egyptians.

Particularly, the Egyptian goalie, El-Hadari is great at setting up such counter attacks either with his goalkicks or with his ball throws. He regularly did, even in their subsequent games against Mozambique and Benin respectively, he continued to use this to rattle their opponents. If the Super Eagles could work more and close this great weakpoint of theirs, the better for the team. On the other hand, our own super Eagles are poor at setting up such kind of counter-attacks, they would rather be passing the ball around and back when they should have taken their opponents by storm in a lightning-speed counter-attack as the Egyptians do.

The Pharaohs Exploit Defensive Errors

The Egyptian scored goal in the opening minutes of second half was clearly more preventable than the first. Our defenders (Nwaneri and Taiwo) are purely to blame. The long ball came from the Egyptian midfield to Mohamed Zidan, Zidan and Nwaneri chased the ball. Actually Nwaneri was better positioned to reach the ball before Zidan, but the sloppily allowed Zidan to outrun him to the ball. Skillful Zidan beautifully controlled and laid a soft and perfect pass to his on-rushing teammate who blasted a canon which Taye helped by deflecting it away from the reach of goalie Enyeama. Pharaohs are 2:1 up with few minutes of second half.

A footballer is supposed to play facing the ball and his opponent. Taye chose the other way (i.e. to back the ball and his opponent), that resulted in the Egyptian second goal. If Taye were facing the ball, he would have blocked that ball either with his head or chest, and then even if the ball had gone past him, golie Enyeama was well-positioned to stop that shot, it sure wouldn’t have entered.

The more credit to the Egyptians, they showed and proved their sharpness in front of goal. They don’t wait for a second chance before they punish their opponent with a goal, every chance is taken, unlike the arrowhead of Nigeria’s attack, Yakubu (balls and goals waster-per-excellence).

Then Nigeria’s Attack Went Dead

Yakubu started as pointman of the attack in this game. He was totally and absolutely not in the game. The only serious thing he did was the cross he delivered in the first half of the match from the right which narrowly missed Obasi and Kalu. Any other thing he did was showing poor ball control that always end him up dispossessed of the ball, passing the ball to his opponents, wasting build-ups done by his teammates, haplessly running up and down the pitch dancing and shaking his big belly and backside. That was pretty what he did for the rest of the tournament.

The result was that the Egyptian defence had a field day with little or no trouble to worry about. Then at a time, the Nigerian attack went totally dead (many thanks to Yakubu). Yakubu surprisingly played all the 90 minutes of the game.

The question is what was the coach doing?