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Sports News of Wednesday, 18 November 2020

Source: completesports.com

AFCON Qualifiers: Appeasing Nigerian fans will take more than qualifying for tourney

The Super Eagles line up against Sierra Leone The Super Eagles line up against Sierra Leone

The Super Eagles failed to make good on their promise to go all out and win the return leg of their fixture with Sierra Leone in Freetown as the two teams played out a goalless draw. The result leaves the Super Eagles on the top of group L table with 8 points.

It was difficult to bet on the Super Eagles coming out victorious in the encounter giving the dismal display by the team in Benin last Friday where they raced into a 4 – 0 lead in the first leg of the game only to surrender the staggering lead and end the game in a 4 – 4 draw. That result got fans upset for different reasons.

Firstly, for those fans who are in the betting community, an outright win was the preferred prediction for the game but with the result ending in a draw, a lot of this fans were furious with the Super Eagles for putting up a shambolic display that caused them a lot of money.

A lot of them did not regard Sierra Leone as a threat whatsoever giving that the team was ranked as No 120 in the FIFA World Ranking while the Super Eagles where ranked as No 32. However, the shocker started from the 72nd minute of the game when the visitors scored a second goal after going into the break down by 4 goals to 1. By the 86th minute, the 4th and final goal of the game had been scored by the visitors leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of millions of Nigerians.

Secondly, the head coach of the Super Eagles, Gernot Rohr has been accused of experimenting with the team as evident by the changes he made in the game. Many Fans concluded that he is introducing foreign based players who are not familiar with how Africans play football and so this leaves the team at a disadvantage when facing even underdogs on the continent. The players and coaching staff had gone on to beg Nigerians for forgiveness and promised that they would go to Freetown and beat the Sierra Leoneans silly.

However, unlike the easy ride in the first half of the game in Benin, the Super Eagles found their Sierra Leonean counterparts a very hard nut to crack this time around as the first half of the game ended in a stalemate. If the fans expressed disappointment for allowing a 4 goal lead to slip in the first leg of the match, their disappointment with the Super Eagles this time around would be in the lackluster performance of the team and their inability to score a single goal against a lowly rated team like Sierra Leone as they were unable to find the back of the net in all of the 90 minutes of regulation time and even the added time.

Although some fans have pointed out on twitter that the horrible pitch in Freetown was a major factor in the Super Eagles posting this result, others believe there is no excuse that can be tendered for this unacceptable performance. Whatever the reasons may be for this performance, it is clear that qualifying for the 2021 African Nations cup will not be enough to appease the anger of Nigerian fans.