A cross section of players of the senior national team of Nigeria have faulted the tactics of head coach Eric Chelle in their heavy 0-3 defeat they suffered against Guinea-Bissau, OwnGoalNigeria.com can exclusively reveal.
Nigeria were comprehensively beaten away from home in their second game in the 2027 AFCON qualifiers, placing them three points behind their victors on Tuesday.
Reacting to the defeat shortly before departing for Russia earlier today for the October 6th friendly game, some players of the team say the coach approached the game with a tactics and formation not good enough for a pitch of that condition.
” The pitch isn’t suited for the diamond formation that means a lot of short passes and ball possession. You can’t circulate play on a pitch like that”, one of the players said.
” Maybe we should have gone with a different formation because of the state of the pitch. We needed to go long and not play short passes because the pitch doesn’t encourage the way we usually play. We failed to adapt and paid the price”, another player said.
The third player we spoke with was even more explicit explaining that their narrow set up left their full backs exposed from ball over the top, which led to all of the three goals conceded.
” We didn’t protect our full backs who were stationed wide and it led to all the goals we conceded. Maybe a conservative 3-4-3, 3-5-2 or 4-3-3 would have given them protection. In the second half when we had natural wingers on we had them on the ropes but the game was already a struggle at that stage”, he stated.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
