A lot of followers of the senior national team of Nigeria were surprised when the head coach of the senior national team of Nigeria, who has constantly preached about the need for the team to play an attacking brand of football made a switch to a more defensive approach at the AFCON.
In his initial one year following his appointment as coach of the Nigerian team, Peseiro played the 4-2-4 formation believing that it is the best way to make use of that attacking talents at his disposal.
The system brought mixed results, but he still stuck with it, but at the AFCON where the team started the first game playing in a 4-3-3 formation, the coach switched to 3-4-3 and stuck with it till the final game where they lost 1-2 to the host Cote d’Ivoire.
Explaining the sudden switch in style, a player in the team revealed it was seen as the best way to approach the tournament owing to the absence of the duo of Victor Boniface of Bayer Leverkusen and Sadiq Umar of Real Sociedad.
” They (Sadiq and Boniface) are the two players who can compliment Victor Osimhen in a two man attack if we play 4-4-2 or 4-2-4 but they were both absent. Kelechi Iheanacho who can play in that role wasn’t entirely fit and didn’t take part in the training camp ahead of the tournament”, he told OwnGoalNigeria.com.
” So we had to adopt a more defensive approach to make up for their absence hence the switch to 3-4-3. Maybe the idea shouldn’t have been used in the final, maybe Moses Simon should have started but you never can tell if that will be enough for us to win”.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
