The Head Coach of the National U-23 team, Samson Siasia, said that the team was a big flop against Burkina Faso in their semi-finals match at the ongoing 11th African Games in Brazzaville.
The team lost 1-3 to Burkina-Faso in a one-sided match played on Tuesday night at the Masamba Debat Stadium, Brazzaville.
“My defenders went sleeping. Our opponent’s tactics worked for them. Long balls, fast and strong guys and we can’t defend against them.
“So many mistakes; playing offside when you don’t even know your opponent well enough. We can’t keep making all these mistakes and expect to win.
“We didn’t play well at all; our defence was very flat today and we didn’t create enough chances to score our goal; that means we are not ready.
“It’s going to be very difficult to go out there and say we want to compete if we don’t take care of these problems; we have a long way to go.
“We just have to go back to the drawing board and try to see what went wrong. Look at other people, I don’t know what happened; they never played this bad before.
“If you kick the long balls, all you have to do is to head the ball; if you allow the ball to bounce it becomes anybody’s ball that is what happened almost all the time. We need to learn from that.
“All you have to do is head the ball to the left or right and that’s it, nothing else,” Siasia said.
The vividly angry coach said that the team was beaten hands down.
“We were beaten hands down. I had never seen the team played that woefully before; they got everything wrong from the start of the game to the end.
“They were not playing to instruction. I told them that the Burkinabe has two tall strikers; they should play in front of them, but my defenders were playing off-side tactics.
“I don’t know when we start playing off-side tactics; they are a big disappointment,” he said.
The coach said that the team wasted all the scoring chances.
“Its unbelievable that we had many scoring chances and we lost it all, except the only one we scored by sheer luck.
“Our opponent had only three chances and they converted them all,” Siasia said.
The coach, however, said that the team would go back home and work on the team ahead of the African Youth Championship in Senegal in October.
Burkina Faso captain Sidney Sylla, said that they were able to make the Nigerian side ordinary.
“First, the goal I scored did not come to me as a surprise.
“I’m used to scoring goals like that, so I don’t think there is anything spectacular about it or Nigerian team.” he said.
Sylla said that they had watched the Nigerian team playing and discovered that their defence was weak.
Some of Nigerians resident in Brazzaville expressed displeasure at the poor performance of the team.
“It’s been long I had seen any Nigerian team play in such manner; the team lack character; no direction, it’s a complete disgrace.
“We came out to cheer our team in our numbers but we are all disappointed with their performance,” Uche Okafor, a shop owner, said.
Another fan, Abigel Obinnna, said she did not believe that any of the players deserved to represent Nigeria in a competition like this; they were just playing as if nothing was at stake.
“I think they are over confident after beating Ghana in their first match. The coaching crew has a lot to do on the team,” she said.
The team will play the third place match against host Congo on Thursday.
