Players of the senior national team of Nigeria are finding it hard to cope with the demand of new coach Jose Peseiro, who has shown so far that he is a coach who want his team to always attack.
His approach is in sharp contrast with the style of former coach Gernot Rohr, who is very conservative in his approach insisting on the team keeping their shape defensively more than they do in the opposition half.
Although Peseiro’s approach has seen the team score in all but one of the games under the Portuguese, the players are uncomfortable with the way he wants them to work both on and off the ball. “It’s too demanding”,a player said in the wake of the 1-2 loss to Algeria.
” We play with a two man midfield and he expects the player behind the striker to drop deep alongside the wingers when we are without the ball. Then move in numbers to crowd the opposition’s box the moment we get the ball”, he explained.
” It’s asking a lot of the players to be honest and the complains have been there as a lot of us are not comfortable especially the defenders. They feel exposed. We are not even allowed to keep the ball in our half, it must be in the opponent’s half. You know how hard that can be”, he rounded up saying.
