Head coach of the senior national team of Portugal Roberto Martinez has given his view on the senior national team of Nigeria after yesterday’s 2-1 win in a pre world cup friendly game, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
Martinez watched on as his team twice took the lead against a Nigerian team , who found their way back through Akor Adams in the 37 minute cancelling Pedro Nero’s opener.
Francisco Conceição netted what ended as the winner 15 minutes to full time handing a perfect sentforth to the team as they head out to the world cup in the USA, where they will open their campaign against fellow African nation DR Congo.
Nigeria failed to make it to the World Cup and head coach Eric Chelle have been using the games to build a new team, that will ensure that the failure of not making to two consecutive world cups doesn’t happen again.
Martinez gave his opinion on the team and their approach in the game and gave credit to the way Chelle set the team up for the game, and his views about their strength.
“Nigeria is very similar to Congo from a football culture perspective. They have physically strong players who attack space aggressively and play very directly, which is something Congo also does”, he explained.
“As a test, it was excellent. We were able to make eleven changes, win the match and execute the concepts we worked on in training. That reflects the attitude of the group, and I’m very pleased with what we’ve done over these two games.
He went ahead to praise Nigeria’s approach to the game, and how they were able to neutralise the threat of the team to grind out a win.
“Today Nigeria played with a diamond and two strikers. There are not many teams in Europe that play like this, so it creates an opportunity to press in a mid block with three, four or five players in central areas.
“That is something that often happens when there is man marking. We have players on the ball like Bernardo Silva, Vitinha and João Neves, and without a doubt in the World Cup we are going to face situations of man marking.
“Today it was about experimenting with our positioning on the ball, creating passing lanes and always creating numerical superiority in central areas.
“It was very good because not only the tactical structure of Nigeria, but also their willingness to take risks in the mid block, made this test perfect for that purpose.”
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
