kellycute:
I just wanna drop this here.. no arguement! Another confirmation of legendary Mikel status from Chelsea. Let me borrow icon slogan

Opari

Well done there. One 'like' for you.

BascoVanVeli:
My lineup for the dead rubber match.

-------------------------Akpeyi-----------------------

Aina--------Omeruo-------------Awaziem----Tyrone

--------------Ogu-----------------Agu----------------

------------------------Alhassan----------------------

Dennis------------Nwakeame-------------Henry-----

Are we building a new team?

Mickael2:



let's put this into context here. 6.6 means you are at 3.4 away from a perfect performance, this was Omeruo's first game of the season(he hardly played any preseason with his teammates) but he got 6.6 in his first match and 7.08 in the next which is a steady rise. He was subbed in with 24mins to go in his last game and he wasn't great but this guy missed preseason as well, I mean we excuse Iheanacho because he missed preseason with Leicester but same can't be applied to Omeruo?

I do not want to be too critical, going round in circles but your initial comment was false. Omeruo has not been better than Ekong this season so far.

Hopefully, he gets better.

TheGoodJoe:


I think the right wing back role is the best thing that has happened to V. Moses. He has played the talent but so undisciplined in his playing style. Same problem we have with Onazi.

Talent is not their problem. Tucking V. Moses to that right changes his mentality. He becomes a team player and plays in a disciplined fashion. Tracks back accurately, does not dwell on the ball and makes the right timed perpetrating runs without the ball.

I hope he maintains that wing back role in the coming years. I do not like seeing him playing like a wild Cannon without raising his head up to monitor the positions of his team-mates.

Spots on Bro. Spot on!

edi287:
I heard his dad is mixed. Half british apparently...

No wonder.

Mickael2:



Last game, that is the point, last game. Check Omeruo's whoscored rating for the season, he isn't bad at all. Personally I believe that Omeruo is a better ball playing CB than Ekong for sure and Balogun to some extent, he makes mistakes and has a few bad games every now and then but who doesn't?

Not every CB is a ball playing CB. And that one is, is just a plus.

Dessers liking Iwobi's tweet.

junnyjake:


Forget what you read here about Agbo being a terrible footballer.

Remember Mikel's early days in Chelsea?? How many times he gets sent off for reckless challenges?

Dude is rash, but I believe he can improve.

I won't play him at CB though, I lived watching him play 4 at Granada.

Yep. Dude is much better than given credit for. He wouldn't be bad as a CB provided he has a calming influence in front of him as DM. Omeruo is still good but he needs to wake up. Leaving him out for a few games might just be the wakeup call he needs

tbaba1234:


Rooney has achieved everything in football and his on a decline. Success is an upcoming player.

It is not about the arrest. It is about the lifestyle.

Right now, football should be his major focus. He should be working his socks off everyday in training to get into the Watford team.

He has the quality. He needs discipline and focus.

CR7 is not the most naturally talented player in the world. But look at where hardwork and discipline has led him to.

What about Hazard at Lille going out to get drunk and then scoring a hat trick the next day?
We are all human even C-Boy went out and painted the town red once or twice in his youth. He just needs to learn from this and become a better person.

[quote author=tbaba1234 post=61220752]Dessers liking Iwobi's tweet.




If he likes,let him like buharis speech ,NO BACK DOOR TO WORLD CUP

Mickael2:



Last game, that is the point, last game. Check Omeruo's whoscored rating for the season, he isn't bad at all. Personally I believe that Omeruo is a better ball playing CB than Ekong for sure and Balogun to some extent, he makes mistakes and has a few bad games every now and then but who doesn't?

Yea u are right,Rohr has said it,Omeruo is still part of d team and we cannot discard him like that,against Zambia d guy was OK if not for that stupid error.I still rate him highly.

Edopesin:

Seriously

How do u mean?

BascoVanVeli:


What about Hazard at Lille going out to get drunk and then scoring a hat trick the next day?
We are all human even C-Boy went out and painted the town red once or twice in his youth. He just needs to learn from this and become a better person.

Hopefully, he does.

soetanoreoluwa:

Are we building a new team?

No, just some guys who the coach will most likely want to see in action.

edi287:

Yep. Dude is much better than given credit for. He wouldn't be bad as a CB provided he has a calming influence in front of him as DM. Omeruo is still good but he needs to wake up. Leaving him out for a few games might just be the wakeup call he needs

Rorh knows what he sees in him and why he keeps getting calls. Them no wan DE hear that boy name for the thread sha.

The Algerian game is now our first pre- world cup friendly and should be taken that way. We should see all the people on the bench that do not play. Every one must justify their place in the world cup.

mostob:
oga joebie and icon4s,who was dat guy sitting on the bench while others are jubilating?

Elderson... He can't walk.. Got ice on his laps

tbaba1234:


I do not want to be too critical, going round in circles but your initial comment was false. Omeruo has not been better than Ekong this season so far.

Hopefully, he gets better.

yes this season he hasn't. I was caught between his rating for last season and this season

AIG07:
I was about giving up and settling for a draw last evening. Considering the fact that our boys often take off their feet from the gas towards the end. But I was suprised by their share determination to round things up. They gave their all even after they've worn out and tired. I love the attitude I saw yesterday. Truly the team has evolved.

Years back/last generation of eagles player would have given up the chase and settle for a draw postponing their qualification thereby leaving the supporters with no other option than to pick up their calculators for Permutation and Combination exercise.

I only hope things get better and we keep progressing in this positive direction.

Just read how the team celebrated their victory with captain Mikel, I must confess the Man John Obi Mikel has really grown up evolving into a true leader. His humility is something else... The team bonding has improved since the time he took over. The boys now see themselves as brothers from one parent-NIGERIA. Seeing Musa participating was the height of it all.

They were really determined. I just pray we get our preparations in gear without the constraints of finance. This is Rohr's first World Cup. He should go brush up oo cos I read Eguavoen one time saying that being a novice at the World Cup affected Westerhof regarding that match against Italy

AIG07:
I am very sure some people must have mocked us. Sticking to the team even after we failed to qualify for AFCON '17 and hoping against all hopes. We have finally scaled through to Russiah.

Shouts out to everyone who have supported this team from regular commenters to ghost readers. You are the real deal and you've made the journey worthwhile.

Special shout out to the op who created this thread in person of Terzurum5-I hope you are glad and happy over there, to the news crew and updates specialist(Sirs Okpyendega, Joebie, Tbaba1234 who is our camera man, forgiveness, blackalbino6 etc) Kudos to you too...

Finally, Wishing the SEs greater success in the future.

God bless the Super Eagles of Nigeria!
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

#SoarEagles and spread your wings over East Europe.

A bigger shoutout to you and all the Super Eagles fans.

This Victory has vindicated us, our hope and believe.

For me he remains our third choice CB. And his inclusion in the world cup squad will be vital. Let's assume that Aina starts playing the LB position, we only have Shehu and Ebuehi who is not that high up Rohr's ladder, Omeruo can do more than a decent job at RB as well, he is a good ball player not just a tackler

Kog45:
Yea u are right,Rohr has said it,Omeruo is still part of d team and we cannot discard him like that,against Zambia d guy was OK if not for that stupid error.I still rate him highly.

komekn:


A long time ago I gave my assessment about Success and the Waste Man tag, I mentioned attitude.

It reminds me of Adel Tarrant one if the most technically gifted players in the world. Saw him at Fulham in training and immediately it became apparent he has big attitude problems. And he would not be going anywhere commensurate with hus amazing talent.

Amazing talent and no discipline will amount to ZERO progress.

I like you sir.. Is this not what I was expecting from you with the post... You are a good man!

Ola Aina though, good player but must minimize the spaces he leaves behind him. Echiejille was average though and mainly lacked pace, he also didn't offer so much support for Moses but l think his critics have been slightly unfair to him most times.
We still need a left back and Omeruo to compete with the oyinbo wall, we also need a center forward and an attacking midfielder relegating Mickel to Central Midfield.

Kog45:
Yea u are right,Rohr has said it,Omeruo is still part of d team and we cannot discard him like that,against Zambia d guy was OK if not for that stupid error.I still rate him highly.

You say you know Ojokojo. How can we convince him to get that his son to play for us. The guy can play comfortably as left back or CB. He's tall, strong and quick. He can either be a back up for our central defensive duo or as substitute for Echiejile or even replacement if he proves his worth so that Aina can stay on the right where he's most comfortable and battle with Shehu for a position at RB.

safarigirl:
na so Ajiboye don replace Alampasu? Na wa o. If we are going to waste a third choice goalie, is it not better to take the young player than someone's father?

The way una dey discharge players for this country ehn...it's cause for concern ....sometimes we act just like the England we love to criticize

I would rather Alampasu, and this Muazzam guy, no more Joel Obi? Onyekuru....what of Nwakaeme? Is Onyekuru now a Top 9? We will not finish with the ones we have in camp, we will be adding people.

This your list is not even 50% accurate, you go see

During U17 2007..ajiboye Don born 3 children... Lol...
Just hope someone will not see this...

And the guy claim 17years ....

11years down the line... Now in super eagle.. Ajiboye is at his peak right now... Thank God is a goalkeeper

I read somewhere that Nigeria qualified for her first World Cup on the 8th of October 1993. We began this campaign in October and ended it in October.

BascoVanVeli:


No, just some guys who the coach will most likely want to see in action.

But seriously I don't see him overhaul all the players and Start entire new first eleven...

The players need to bond more... World Cup in not far again... Just three or four changes will do... Not the whole first eleven..

Expect change at left back wings, striking position and probably goalkeeper but I can't tell you...the changes won't be much..

Papi Rohr is more of players bonding that doing experient...even during friendly he will start his first eleven them bring in other players..

Like Akpeyi, Elderson, Onazi and Simon... These four players will need extra effort to be back in start eleven... Something extra ordinary...


Just my opinion...

Tweets...enjoys still about yesterday

My best tweet so far!

FAREWELL ANDREA PIRLO, FOOTBALL'S LAST ARTIST IN AN ERA OF ATHLETES
Carlo Garganese
11:30
Goal
The playmaker announced that he will retire from football in December - he'll go down in history as an all-time great and one of the last of his kind
Italy have produced some magnificent midfielders over the years. Valentino and Sandro Mazzola, Gianni Rivera, Giancarlo Antognoni, Marco Tardelli, Rino Gattuso, Daniele De Rossi – the list goes on and on. But one player trumps all of these stars, the maestro that is Andrea Pirlo.
On Sunday, Pirlo announced that he will retire from football when his contract with New York City FC expires in December
.
Italy 18/1 to win World Cup
“You realise by yourself that the moment has arrived,” the 38-year-old told
Gazzetta dello Sport. “Every day you have physical problems. At my age, you have to say: enough. You can’t keep on until you are 50."
Since making his Serie A debut for hometown club Brescia at the age of just 16, Pirlo has wowed audiences all over the world.
Football is so tribal, especially in Italy, that it is very rare to find a world-class player who transcends club colours and national boundaries. Along with the likes of Javier Zanetti, Paolo Maldini and Gianluigi Buffon, Pirlo is adored by almost everyone.
He is adored because he is so unique. Instantly recognisable - with or without his flowing locks and trademark beard - to watch L'architetto (The Architecht) effortlessly glide around the pitch, moving the ball and his team-mates like a chess-master and curling home stylish free-kicks is pure beauty.
For purists of the game, Pirlo is everything that a footballer should be. He is slow, he is weak, he doesn’t head, tackle or sprint, but such is his genius from a technical and mental viewpoint that he is still untouchable.
It is for this reason that Pirlo is particularly worshipped in Brazil – the country where joga bonito was born. Many Brazilians yearn for a return to the days of 1970 and 1982 where free spirits like Rivelino, Tostao, Socrates and Zico revelled in their Bohemian surroundings. Pirlo is the representation of the untainted, carefree, risk-taking football Brazilians wish they still played.
"Andrea Pirlo is the most Brazilian player of all Europeans. He's the first player on the paper if I had to make a dream team,” said former Brazil coach Dunga, ironically one of the first figures to signal the Selecao’s shift towards athleticism.
Indeed, we now live in the age of the athlete. Rule changes, medical advancements, synthetic footballs and the subsequent tactical evolution and increased speed of the game have pushed most artists of Pirlo’s ilk out of the sport. He is more suited to the 1980s when the game was slower, more technical and effective total pressing was still years away.
"He's the epitome of class; a man who leads the team using all the weapons that some consider antiquated yet, for me, are irreplaceable: deception, the pause, the fake, precision," said ex-Argentina and Real Madrid star Jorge Valdano. "These are all the exact opposite of that word that is so fashionable today and such a disaster for the game: 'intensity'."
This intensity could have robbed us of Pirlo’s genius, too. As the No.10 position began to become obsolete, Pirlo struggled to nail down a place at Inter. Fortunately, first Brescia’s Carlo Mazzone and then Carlo Ancelotti at AC Milan had the foresight to move Pirlo back from his natural habitat into a deep-lying playmaker role. From there, he could express himself, dictating the tempo and executing his pin-point through passes.
Perhaps no one since Michel Platini has been so accurate and effective when it comes to the lofted chipped ball over the top of the defence. Perhaps no one at all has been as calm and unflustered in possession as the 116-cap international. No matter the quality of the opposition nor the size of the game - there was no such thing as pressure to Pirlo.
“I don’t feel pressure … I don’t give a toss about it. I spent the afternoon of Sunday 9 July, 2006 in Berlin sleeping and playing the PlayStation. In the evening, I went out and won the World Cup,” he famously remarked.
As a regista, Pirlo was the brains and beating heart of one of the Champions League’s best ever club midfields. Together with Gattuso, Clarence Seedorf and Kaka, Milan reached three Champions League finals, a semi-final and quarter-final in five years in the mid-noughties, winning two titles and throwing another two away.
His good cop-bad cop partnership in the middle of the park with the snarling Gattuso was vital as Italy ended a 24-year wait to finally lift a fourth World Cup in the summer of 2006. In Germany, Pirlo topped the charts for assists and man-of-the-match awards. He scored their first goal of the tournament against Ghana with a rasping drive and assisted Marco Materazzi’s equaliser in the final win over France, also scoring in the victorious shootout.
And just like any great player, he proved his doubters wrong when many wrote him off after Milan ended their 10-year love affair by releasing him in 2011. In his 33rd year, he enjoyed perhaps the best individual season of his career. He was the catalyst for new club Juventus, who had been in the doldrums since the Calciopoli crisis, inspiring them to the Scudetto without losing a game before starring at Euro 2012 – where he was unplayable in the knockout victories over England and Germany.
Article continues below
He was named Serie A Player of the Year, retaining the honour in the next two seasons as the Bianconeri built a dynasty. Juve are currently on a six-year Serie A-winning stretch. The only true disappointment during his stint in Turin was his final game for the club in 2015 as Juve suffered a 3-1 Champions League final defeat to Barcelona in Berlin. He was reduced to tears on the Olympiastadion pitch as he narrowly missed out on a historic treble.
His two-and-a-half years at New York City FC have also been mixed at best, scoring just one goal, but by the time he arrived in the United States it was clear he was winding down his career.
Indeed, he has created more than enough history during a glittering career. He has won almost every major title for club and country - six Scudetti, two Champions Leagues, a World Cup and European Under-21 Championship among 19 team honours. Some insiders believe he would have won the Ballon d’Or in 2012 had Italy not lost that year’s final of the European Championship – the one elite trophy to elude him.
His career is full of unforgettable moments that will still be played on highlight reels 50 years from now. From his Panenka penalty against England at those Euros to his reverse assist to Fabio Grosso six years earlier during the most dramatic ending to a World Cup semi-final in Dortmund. Then there was his sublime chipped ball for Roberto Baggio to famously round Edwin van der Sar in 2001, his free kick versus Real Madrid in 2009 and another stunning set piece against Mexico on the occasion of his 100th Italy cap.
“Pirlo is a genius. Together with Baggio, I think he’s the greatest talent that Italian football has produced in the last 25 years,” gushed Gianluigi Buffon.
"History will remember him as one of the best ever for sure. He has achieved everything," Pirlo's former team-mate Samuele Dalla Bona told Goal upon news of his retirement.
What is certain is that there will never be another player as unique as Pirlo. For not only is he Italy’s best ever midfielder and one of the all-time greats in his role – he is perhaps football’s last pure artist in an era of athletes.

source: goal.com


Cc: Sir Mujtahida

Mujtahida:

You say you know Ojokojo. How can we convince him to get that his son to play for us. The guy can play comfortably as left back or CB. He's tall, strong and quick. He can either be a back up for our central defensive duo or as substitute for Echiejile or even replacement if he proves his worth so that Aina can stay on the right where he's most comfortable and battle with Shehu for a position at RB.

Yea but NFF guys know him very well especially Chief Taiwo Ogunjobi,Segun Odegbami, Felix Owolabi,these people are enough to talk to him coz it seems he is d problem not d boy.

I don't expect him to be a stumbling block on this issue,he was a very local home based player then and i thought he should be happy seeing d boy played for Nigeria.

Kudos to Iwobi and Aina Fathers, see d join in their face, just like when someone child graduated from d university.They are just too happy seeing their children playing for Nigeria.

Hope Tammy Dad can do d same thing, though a lot are not happy with him now for coming out to denied Nigeria but hope he can have a rethink.

Ojokojo and Irofa fall my hand on their children coz they know d system very well and nobody should tell them before these guys pledge allegiance to Nigeria.

My wish is to see Felix Uduokhai,Ojokojo, Irofa in Nigeria colour and make d competition thick in d national team just like d way we are seeing Aina,Iwobi Balogun, Ekong doing it.

Three musketeers!