By Chigozie Chukwuleta, in Abuja.
The Nigerian U-17 Coach, John Obu did not mince words when he accepted that his boys were tactically indiscipline in the opening match against Germany which led to the split of points.
Obu in his unbiased assessment of his team’s performance agreed that it would not have been a difficult game for them if the players were not giving too much respect to the Germans and turned to spectators while the Mannschaft turned them inside out to the annoyance of the fans, who fled the stadium when the Eaglets were two goals down.
“It was a difficult game because I did not really know the Germans too well, although I watched their video just 30 minutes to the match. My players gave too much liberty to the Germans to deal with us. The game plan was to attack them en mass, but being young boys they got carried away by the intimidating posture of the European champions.”
The Eaglet Coach told Africansportsdigest.com exclusively that the match was an eye opener for his boys, who have never participated in a competitive tournament like this since his team did not participate in the African qualifiers.
“We’re going back to the drawing board to get things sorted out and I’ll talk to the boys in the language there will understand. It was the can do Nigerian spirit that saw us through,” he added.
Odafe Egbedi’s thrilling equalizer in the 61st minute was all Nigeria needed to secure a point in the movie-like 3-3 thriller. Nigerian fans, who had left the stadium when their team was 2-0 down, will curse their stars for missing the thrills. A match the German’s coach, Marco Pezzaiuoli. also described as being very difficult.
“It was a difficult game for my players, playing against a physically strong Nigerian. Perhaps, the red card affected them, but I think the weather was also a factor which got them down in the second stanza of the game,” coach Pezzaiuoli said.
He applauded his players for not giving away victory to the Nigerian team, he described as a very compact and difficult team to easily understand.
After slamming the woodwork inside 10 minutes of play, the Werder Bremen attacker, Lennart Thy headed home from a brilliant Mario Goetze cross in the 21 minutes for opening goal of the match. The goal dwarfed the Nigerians as they struggled to put a foot right.
In spite of few long range shots, the Eaglets, who looked frustrated, failed to change the situation as Shkodran Mustafi doubled the lead with a cool side-footed goal from a corner kick in the 41st minute. They went into the break two goals up.
Barely 12 minutes into the second half, the Germans made it three goals through Goetze’s excellent header. The Nigerian floppy defence was too casual allowing the Germans to move behind the last man most of the time and stole away free headers.
The hour of respite came for the homers few minutes after the German home run goal, Robert Labus cut down resilient, Omoh Ojabu in the area, to give away a penalty to the Eaglets and got sent out. Nigeria’s lead scorer, Stanley Okoro stepped forward and scored. This led to an enthralling fight back and Kenneth Omeruo, moved in, freed his marker and nodded home a corner kick in the 59th minute, before Egbedi volleyed home a deflected shot to settle matters and keep Eaglets in contention for the second round ticket.