Former coach of the EFCC Football Club, Coach Haruna Ilerika Usman has commended the efforts of Super Eagles coach, Jose Peseiro for a yeoman job against the Elephants of Cote d’ivoire but however advised him to try the duo of Ahmed Musa and Paul Onuachu against Guinea Bissau on Monday so that he can have options subsequently.
He made the call in an exclusive interview with NewsHunters at his hotel in Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire on Sunday.
The man who is nicknamed Ilerika during his football playing days, and who is also the coach of the U15 National Youth Team said, there is need for Onuachu to be started so that he can complement the efforts of Victor Osimhen upfront and what that means is that he has to change his formation but if he wants to adopt the formation he used against the Ivorians, then there is need for Musa to be in the team instead of Chukwueze who was not utilizing the balls very well.
His words, “The coach has noticed that he can adopt more of a defensive approach, and run against the run of play but what he needs to do now is to complement and get good results with the counter attack, probably to me, Ahmed Musa has to come in. We need somebody with speed. If you watch the matches we have played so far, Osimhen goes for aerial battle, and it is still the same Osimhen that goes for the follow-up, it is not done anywhere unless the coach will fall back to 4-4-2 formation whereby he allows Onuachu to complement Osimhen’s efforts, which is still very good because if you use Osimhen and Onuachu upfront, there is no defence line that will take the risk of moving and you must have pulled back a certain number of people back to their half. They will not be able to support their midfielders to do any good job and when the defenders cannot support the midfielders, it means they are at your mercy. It also means that it is a tactical formation of creating a balance between your team and the opponent’s team.
“Guinea Bissau have nothing to loose, they can afford to throw their men to the attack. If the combination of Osimhen, Lookman and maybe any other attacker that is ready to run, but for me, Paul Onuachu would have been more effective, because I saw one good thing about him when he came in as substitute against Cote d’ivoire. He knows that he had very little time on the pitch and he maximized that time, showing the stuff he is made of, that is, retaining the ball for others to come and that shows he can do it. So all we need is for us to be able to make an effective counter attack in the opponent’s half, so that we can get the goal and then seal off.
“Let’s look for an attacker who can run better, the runs must be worked upon. If the coach looks at the last match, what he needs to do is to work on it, when making a counter attack – who is drifting the defenders away, who is attacking the space? So that it will help the team to get more goals. If we have won two or three goals in the last match, it wouldn’t have been too much, the opportunity came, how many was converted, or how many did Osimhen and Chukwueze had? Chukwueze had opportunities but overdragging and there was not enough opening of the defence line in the goal area.
The man who also doubles as the secretary of the FCT Football Association said he wasn’t surprised that the Super Eagles defeated Cote d’ivoire because he knows that when it comes to big challenges, the boys will always raise their game. “I wasn’t too surprised that we won Cote d’Ivoire, I know what our national team looks like and how they play. Nigeria always struggles against the minnows, in virtually all matches but when it comes to strong opposition, the professionalism in them comes out, the class in them comes out.
“When you are playing a minnow, it is natural that you must muscle them out, play very fast game, create an incursion into their half severally to be able to get goals but when you relax too much, an underdog will be too comfortable because he knows you are not putting too much pressure on him, which will allow him to either get a draw or even win but against a very big country or team of the same pedigree, you have to demonstrate some strong quality like our own, play with tactics, play with formation. At that level, the big boys in our national team come out, I can say that for the first time, the tactical approach against Cote D’Ivoire was effective right from the beginning of the game. Peseiro didn’t derail and it was obvious that he had a game plan. I have not seen such a plan for some time.”
On how to approach the game against Guinea Bissau, he said, “The coach must have an idea of the pressing he wants to do. It is either you are doing high pressing, which the Super Eagles is not used to, it is only at the junior level we do that, but at the senior level, we don’t do high pressing but in the last match, we saw middle pressing that paid off. We did middle pressing at the centre, wait for them, we have a situation of counter attack and we do. We had counter attacks on several occasions in our last game, it’s just that we failed to convert them, if not, we had the opportunity of scoring more than three goals,” Coach Ilerika said.
On whether there is any team that can stand as a stumbling block for the Super Eagles, Ilerika said, “The competition has just started, and somebody cannot start thinking that he wants to win because we are still in the group stage. And for now, you don’t underrate or underestimate any team, we are just in our own group. With what we have seen, there are many power blocs in African football so it would be too early to say whether we can use the match of Cote d’ivoire to judge whether we will win the trophy or not.”
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