After a disappointing performance in the final of the Africa Cup of Nations, here are Completesports.com’s Super Eagles player ratings against Côte d’Ivoire.
Stanley Nwabali
Pulled off a great save to keep the Eagles in the game when the Ivorians were piling in the pressure.
Couldn’t be faulted for any of the goals as he was left unprotected – 5
Ola Aina
Played one of his worst performance in a Super Eagles shirt as he had no answer to Simon Adingra.
Was easily beaten for pace by Adingra whose cross found Sebastien Haller for the winner – 4
Semi Ajayi
The only player who featured in every minutes for the Eagles and did his bit.
Unfortunately, could do little as the the pressure from the hosts was immense – 6
William Troost-Ekong
Continued his impressive performance as he gave the Eagles the lead with a superb header which unfortunately was not enough.
Marked his brilliant performance with the Player of the Tournament award – 7
Calvin Bassey
Made a timely goal line block to preserve the Eagles’ lead unfortunately did not have the best of nights due to the overall poor performance of the team – 6
Zaidu Sanusi
Returned to the starting line-up but had a game to forget as he had a hand in both of Côte d’Ivoire’s goals.
Was in no man’s land for the equaliser and his poor attempt to close down Franck Kessie proved costly.
Also, his poor clearance off a long pass helped the hosts capitalize which led to the second goal – 4
Frank Onyeka
Put in his shift as usual but could not do anything to help contain the wave after wave of attack from the hosts.
Should be proud of his overall performance for the Eagles – 6
Alex Iwobi
Failed to raise his game as he was no where close to his best as he was guilty of needlessly giving the ball away and offered nothing going forward – 4
Samuel Chukwueze
Was a surprise inclusion in the first half but was rightly replaced early in the second half as he offered nothing to the team – 4
Ademola Lookman
Was not at his best for the second game running and was rightly replaced.
Should still be proud of his overall performance in a team that was not given a chance prior to the start of the competition- 5
Victor Osimhen
Had a game to forget as he had nothing to feed on due to lack of service.
Was eventually put out of his misery as he was pulled out – 5
Substitutes:
Moses Simon
Was surprisingly left out of the starting line-up and could not do much when he eventually came on for the disappointing Chukwueze- 5
Kelechi Iheanacho
Almost equalised for the Eagles but saw his shot blocked inside the box.
Did everything possible to drag the Eagles back into the game but his effort was futile -5
Terem Moffi
Made his second appearance in the competition as a substitute but could not help salvage anything – 5
Alhassan Yusuf
Was brought on to help stabilize the Eagles’ midfield but was overwhelmed by the occasion.
Will use the AFCON 2023 as a learning experience going forward moving forward in the Eagles – 5
Joe Aribo
Was also introduced into the game but just like his previous performance failed to make any meaningful impact – 5
19 Comments
The coach should go. Why on earth is Arinola and Iwobi,Musa in this team. They are all a minus. You don’t go into a championship with players you can’t use. You can see what happened yesterday night
Apparently, Super Eagles fans are disappointed. Nonetheless, We must accept finite disappoint but never lose infinite hope are the words of Martin Luther King Jr… On that note and as fans of the Super Eagles, high time we left all that happened at the nation cup behind while rallying around our darling team, lending our support and prayers for their next engagements.
*The operating words are:
Finite and
Infinite.
I have always retained my opinion that coach peseiro and nff are an inconvenience and incompetent bunches! If we must lose we want to play ball and attack and defend not this outdated style of pack the bus! Like we are some division 3 club side, afraid to go toe to toe in all our matches! Always waiting for that only one chance like we are not a football country, it was an embarrassing site view to behold because some Nigeria people lost their life because of heart attack football me myself I merely survived o! Nff! Please tell peseiro thank you so much for his service and let him go peacefully without any amateur media drama ok! Get in EMMANUEL AMUNEKE ASAP… let him make little changes not much change and we will be OK… I enjoy coach eguavon Team more than this nonsense. Get amuneke now
Coach Eguavoen, he has an antecedent worthy of mention but for Amuneke, he failed woefully as Coach of Tanzania national team and also failed as a coach of a local club in Egypt, so let’s go for merit instead of being emotional. Unless the NFF knows nothing next to perfomance rating, Amuneke is a disaster and the Super Eagles don’t need trial and error.
U’re spot on!
The boys won’t even respect Amunike because of his poor records. What about Olofijana or Oliseh assuming we aren’t sentimental?
Samson Siasia is our best bet, when his suspension ends, that is.
Even a bad book can be a measure of the time and good stuffs to come. The rating is fair enough but just as @Odion is advising football loving fans, let’s leave the disappoint behind to moving forward.
#Eagles4life
If you want to lose a final don’t lose so badly. You even lost to a nit too good team. Eagles list badly.
Amuneke and finidi come in. Pesero tried but he should go
I think iwobi should not be starting matches. He is good player but not s great player.
I missed ndidi. Great players find a way ti rise to the occasion despite the problem.
We just donate the cup to Cote D’Ivoire. Too bad.
Anyway. They tried. 4th title so close but now very far. Even SA would have done better in the final.
At the beginning of the tournament if anybody had said “Nigeria will be in the final”, we would have grabbed it with both hands, personally I thought we would do well to even get to the second round, maybe at best the quarter finals. So they exceeded mine and many people’s expectations.
Why did we lose in the final? because we were a “one trick pony, made necessary by a poor squad selection. We could have taken 27 players, but we decided to take 25. And then handicap it by selecting a player or two or three who were never going to play and as such limit our ability to adapt tactics and systems.
We stumbled on a 3:4:3 formation and used it to bamboozle Ivory Coast in the first match. And then used it again in the final group stage match, and then against Cameroon, Angola and South Africa.
By the time we had used the same formation the 4th game, we became predictable and South Africa almost found a way past us, but we were lucky. Ivory Coast playing at home in the final knew how we would set up and that we would try and defend a slim lead and devised a game plan to beat us.
They are no mugs, they got the job done.
All in all, the Super Eagles did well in the tournament, but we can see that when you do the same thing over and over again and become predictable, someone will figure out a way to defeat it.
Those whom continuously improve and look for ways to do better often get what they deserve. Those whom are comfortable in what they have always done, often find themselves regressing
Many thanks to the Complete Sports for the updates as in the rating as well.
Sincerely speaking and irrespective of the inane bitterness, let’s begin to look into d World Cup qualifiers.
If we’re retaining Coach Peseiro having met his target of getting us to the semis, fine. If not, who is the most qualified local coach among the mix?
CSN should kindly work on the aforementioned.
Most comment here does not reflect the whole tournament b4 the tournament nobody give the coach chance even thought of reaching the final , my people the only match lost you are now blaming the coach. When eguovon was the coach he never pass the first round both in Africa cup and world cup .this coach use the best tactics to suit this team bcos they are not good enough and only 5 player deserve to be in the nigeria team the rest should retire , you have to keep the coach to build for the next tournament
Not giving the coach a chance means that he is not good from the onset
How do you judge a coach ? B4 tournament or after tournament?
Lol, people can be so funny. All week long, we are singing the praise of all the players and coaches, even when they are not playing well but winning.
From day 1, even against the Equitoria and Guinea Bissau, we never dominate matches. Throughout the knockout stages, we were always outplayed,however, the most important thing is to win, and they always pulled that off.
I dont think there is anyone here that would have put his money on this team to go as far as even the quarter final, and now they lost to the host and people are already mentioning EGUAVOEN, AMUNIKE, SIASIA, OLISEH. Iwobi is bad, Osinmeh is overrated, Bassey is rubbish, Musa is this and that, but Senegal, Ghana, Egypt, Morocco had some of the best players, so why are they not in the final ? y`all should go back to work or bed and wait for the next match or tournament and stop coming up with all these ridiculous names.
The players were simply tired as they had to defend all through the period of 5 games. It is exhaustive not to talk about the last match against SA.
The coach ought to have changed it’s tactics in the final, having met the same team a second time. No wonder our best player is a defender. In addition for those that blamed Iwobi and Osinmeh, the set up wasn’t their best suit.
All the same we exceeded the expectations, and have done well to clinch second place.
Ivory cost has just proven to us that, we are only paying huge salary to these average coaches with white skins because of our inferiority compex plus corruption; at least a motivated u20 coach, an assistant coach for that matter was elevated in the middle of the tournament and at the end , taught many of these white skins coaches particularly our own Paserio the basics of coaching.
I was embarrassed with the packaging of bus by our coach as if we were division 3 club playing against Manchester city; Paserio killed the match with his selection and packaging bus silly game plan and ultimately destroyed Nwabali chances of been signed by the top 5 clubs in Europe because if not for the loos and two goals conceded yesterday, he would have emerged the best goalkeeper of the tournament.
Nevertheless; kudos to the progressive super eagles fans who fought relentlessly that the two of our goalkeepers were baskets and not a materials for super falcons let alone Super eagles but Paserio like his clueless senior brother Oga Rohr who wasted over half decade without given us average goalkeeper let alone good one.
My heart goes to Nwabli , a local player who ends up becoming a revelation!
A properly paid and supported Siasia is the answer when his fifa racist ban expires
God bless you for this Destar, from the first game have being screaming about the tactics being used, why will a team that on record is parading the deadliest attacking players, but a clueless coach resulted to packing the bus saying what matters is the goal. Honestly i was watching a rubbish Nigerian team, it now looked like have never watched soccer before.
To all you calling our locals rubbish, please kindly tell us those that were given the opportunity this journey man got. What many of you failed to understand is many of this coaches are fortunate to have the caliber of players at their disposal. How is Oga Rorh doing so far, if this man leaves i bet you he will go back to his losing record. How coming the NFF hired a coach with a losing record, but Amuneke can’t be hired. Mind you he got Tanzania back into AFCON after 39 years. Tanzania doesn’t boast of the kinds of players we have. Cut the man some slack. As for Eguavoen, do you want to compare his teams display in 2019 to what you watched at this tournament. Let our local coahes be given a chance like all this journeymen.
Thumbs up!!!
Wow! My mind has been cluttered with so much in the last 24 hours, I resisted the temptation to comment because I felt I would not do justice in my emotional state of mind. However, having slept over the match yesterday and the dust raised between the battle of the Elephant and Eagle had cleared, It is only apt that I lend my 2 cents on what transpired in Abidjan. When the referee blew the final whistle, certain questions raced through my mind as I began to take stock of how far this team has come, some I will share here. Let me state it here in very clear terms that the Team did a fantastic job out there in Ivory Coast and if any of the players read this, they should be consoled to know that there are a lot of fans who appreciate the hard work and dedication they put in. Sadly , there are knuckleheads out there who go to the social media platforms of these players to insult them (I am embarrassed on their behalf).
One key question that popped up in my mind was that should the coach be allowed to carry in his duties as coach? Has he done enough to deserve another crack at it? I wanted to be very objective and not swayed by the sentiments. Quite frankly, If the decision was left to me , I would NOT renew his contract. I know most fans will say question my position but please hear me:
1. I watched in horror as the Ivorian team kept peppering our defense, with wave after wave attacks and our coach felt powerless to address the inevitable. He lacked the tactical dexterity and nous to see that Adingra had settled for Aina as his partner in an aggressive tango dance, twisting and spinning him at every chance and to the delight of spectators. Even the three blind mice could see that Aina was being turned inside out and folded neatly likely a laundry outfit but Peseiro never responded to the obvious threat. It was quite apparent that Aina having played 120 mins of football few days ago and played every single game in the tourney; in the end, he did not have the legs to cope with an obviously fresh Adingra. Aina needed to be taken off and Bright Osayi Samuel should have come on. In addition, Chukwueze should never have started that game. We played Ivory Coast with 9 outfield players in my opinion.
2. How did a football powerhouse like Nigeria play a team like Ivory Coast in a final and adopt a 3-4-3 system? We were not playing Brazil, France or Spain. It truly highlights how low we have fallen in football. We were bossed all around the pitch. I was hoping that Peseiro would pull an element of surprise in the final by adopting an attacking system but he couldn’t because he did not have the tools in midfield to achieve that which leads me nicely to my 3rd point below.
3. What kind of midfield did Jose Peseiro pick? He picked a midfield of Iwobi, Frank , Aribo and Onyedika. Aribo had no business being in the team let alone donning the number 10 jersey. He went with a 4 man midfield which was extremely small. An Nwakali would have offered a lot to the eagles attacking play.
4. I still doubt the judgement of peseiro. His decision to take Onuachu who he used sparingly to waste time in games is still mind boggling, especially when a player like Akor Adams was available. His decision to take 25 players when CAF allowed 27 players still leaves me bewildered. If not for the outrage by many stakeholders, fans included, Peseiro would have been comfortable taking Uzoho as number 1. Imagine having the option of giving Osimhen a rest after 60 mins into a game when we are leading and giving a Player like Akor a run out; that would have kept Osimhen fresh but we over extended him.
5. Having been in charge of the team for some years now, has he really done enough to solve the obvious limitations in his team? I do not think he has. He has not done enough to build or rejig our midfield hence why the Strikers struggle. Thanks to the people in the glass house who suggested Nwabali to him; if not, it could have been a lot worse. We need another dependable backup goal keeper in the team. Our wings lack the cutting edge it had in yester years. Has he done enough to get new wingers? Even the defenders, Have we done enough to try other options in central defense? I think that we are the only team (I could be wrong) that used 3 center backs consistently in most of our matches.
You can not fault a man that meets set targets but such negative football may see a meteoric rise in results but ultimately like most meteors, it would come crashing down to earth. Mourinho is an example, such football is not sustainable and such teams will eventually become dinosaurs. That is why Pep would always be the beautiful bride of football whose delectable brand of football becomes more alluring with each passing day. There is a lot of work ahead but the NFF have an important decision to make, I pray they do so wisely!