Nigeria suffered one of their heaviest defeat in ten years by losing 0-4 to Portugal yesterday in an international friendly game played at the Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon.
Emmanuel Dennis was the target of most Nigerians after he insisted on taking a penalty won by Bright Osayi-Samuel with scores at 0-2. Captain of the team William Troost Ekong had an argument with him over it.
Ekong was told by coach Jose Peseiro from the bench to take the spot kick but all attempts to get the ball from his former Watford teammate proved abortive. Ekong it looked like wanted Paul Onuachu to take the spot kick not even himself.
Dennis stood his ground and saw his effort come off the woodwork aided by a fingertip push by goalkeeper Rui Patricio. Two minutes later, Portugal scored two more goals to round up an empathic win. Peseiro admitted that the penalty miss changed the dynamic of the game but refuse to blame Dennis for taking it.
” I think we show here in the second half against a big team that we can do much better. Of course if you have a chance of bringing the scores to 1-2 and you missed a penalty that’s very sad but I am not chiding my players. My players try to do the right thing, try to fight for us”, he started of saying in his post match interview with NFFTV.
“This moment if you score 1-2 you can push for a draw but you didn’t score and after that you suffer two goals. I think we lose the balance in that moment. We have to improve, we must improve because we want to win the next AFCON”, he further stressed before absolving Dennis of any blame.
“I need one thing about that I speak with my players. In my team, in my national team I won’t allow one player to be killed. Okay, he missed a penalty.
“The next time we can train him more on how to take the penalty. We need to defend our players, which player don’t miss penalty in the world? I don’t know. Any player can miss penalty. It was Dennis today, he has my protection, he rounded up saying.
