After the highs from beating rivals Ghana on Wednesday night, Nigeria was brought down to earth with a humbling 2-2 draw against Jamaica in the Unity Cup mini tournament held at Brentford’s Gtech Community Stadium. Nigeria eventually overcame Jamaica 5-4 via penalty shootout to take the trophy, but the game never came close to matching the excitement provided by the encounter with Ghana.
For starters, Nigeria’s rivalry with Jamaica was not in the same proportions as Nigeria v Ghana. There is ongoing debate whether Afrobeats, dominated by Nigerian singers, has eventually eclipsed reggae. That debate was continued over the turntables inside the ground between a Jamaican DJ and his Nigerian counterpart before yesterday’s final. The Jamaican fans, possibly outnumbering the Nigerians about three to one, provided a carnival atmosphere to the occasion. And judging by how each sections of the stadium responded to either Afrobeats or reggae from the DJs, the majority may have decided that reggae is still king of the dancehalls.
The failure of Nigerians to turn up in great numbers was most likely due to the opportunism of the organisers in hiking up ticket prices, with the cheapest at £63, about £20 more than was charged for the Wednesday game. There was also the timing of the game at 5pm, meaning that it left fans with little time to get home to watch the Champions League final that kicked off three hours later.
Nigeria should really have beaten Jamaica with minimum fuss, but for poor finishing from giant striker and sub Tolu Arokadare, who had 25 minutes of the second half to demonstrate whether he could be adequate backup for the missing talismanic striker Victor Osimhen. Despite finishing the past season as top scorer in the Belgian top flight with 21 goals in 38 games, Arokadare’s teammates did little to take advantage of his 6’6″ frame by delivering decent aerial balls. One of the biggest culprits was Moses Simon, whose poor decision making continues to get worse with time.
Simon started the scoring in the 9th minute from an assist from Cyriel Dessers. But any hopes of a comfortable evening for Nigeria were dashed as Jamaica responded three minutes later with Kaheem Dixon, after a swift break and a cross from the right side of Nigeria’s defence. Samuel Chukwueze, who probably had his best ever game for Nigeria doubled his country’s lead with a left foot drive into the bottom corner after 53 minutes. But it was cancelled out again 10 minutes later by John Russell, following another break down the right of Nigeria’s defence. All three goals Nigeria conceded in their two games in this tournament had come from the defensive position manned by Sodiq Ismaila. The Remo Stars defender has looked good going forward with his balls into the opposition box, but his positioning and awareness were brutally exposed.
On the other flank, Felix Agu from Werder Bremen made his debut and hardly put a foot wrong, covered up for the mistakes of others, and the only thing missing from his game was being an attacking threat by taking advantage of the space in front of him. Instead he usually looked for the safe square ball when he could have gone down the outside.
Nigeria continues to struggle for creativity in the middle of the park and this has been a feature of their games in recent memory even when the likes of Alex Iwobi are available for selection. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious choices to fill that role and coach Eric Chelle must try to compensate for this weakness by getting the wide players and fullbacks to stretch the play and provide more attacking intent from wide positions. Bayer Leverkusen’s Nathan Tella, on his second game for Nigeria, huffed and puffed in midfield but provided little inspiration.
Back in the day when Nigeria had the likes of Jay-Jay Okocha, Findi George and Daniel Amokachi, one London-based Nigerian said to Sky Sports before they played England at Wembley in 1994, that “you’re about to witness rhythm and blues on the football pitch”. The football from the Super Eagles these days gives the fans the blues but not much rhythm.
