All The Right Reasons…
Stephen Keshi’s Super Eagles side improbably rose above skepticism and naysaying to win its third Afcon title in February. Impressively, they improved game-on-game, and Keshi tinkered and fiddled till he found his best eleven in the upset win against Cote d’Ivoire’s Elephants. He stuck with that till the end of the tournament, save for an Emmanuel Emenike injury which ruled him out of the final game.
This loyalty to a certain group of players has helped the Super Eagles scale through qualifying for the World Cup in Brazil next year. Now that is out of the way, it is time to consider a position that has proved problematic still: the right-back slot.
Since that Afcon triumph, it has been manned without fail by Celtic’s Efe Ambrose. He is no stranger to the big occasion, as he is a fixture in a Champions League team. Watch the Scottish Champions and you will find Ambrose bombing down the right flank from deep, providing an attacking outlet, slaloming past defenders and whipping in crosses. Wait, no?
You will not find any footage of that variety anywhere. That is because for the Bhoys, Ambrose plays at center back, snuffing out opposition attacks and playing short tidy passes into the midfielders and wide to the full backs. So who is the Daniel Alves evoking swashbuckler I described earlier? None other than Efe Ambrose.
In the National side, Ambrose fulfills the role of marauding wing back. As a center back by trade, you might be tempted to think this would make the team solid defensively on the right but lacking bite going forward. This is usually what you get in such a situation. In an inexplicable twist, it is the other way around.
Ambrose has consistently shown himself positionally undisciplined and poor at timing challenges and intercepting while playing right back, but excellent and impetuous going forward. This is not a one-off, and I will point out a few examples centering on the Confederations Cup in June.
In the second group game, Nigeria played South American champions Uruguay. John Obi Mikel’s superb strike late in the first half had pulled the Super Eagles level going into the break. Uruguay would proceed to score a second half winner through Diego Forlan, which should never have happened. The move began with Nigerian possession midway in their own half. Ahmed Musa, playing on the left, comes to the halfway line to receive a pass. Being Ahmed Musa, he miscontrols and the ball is nicked off him and suddenly Uruguay are breaking, running at the Nigerian defence 3 on 3. Wait, what?
Elderson Echejile, the left back, goes to Luis Suarez, but is unable to stop him. Pass to Cavani in the middle, Godfrey Oboabona comes across to meet him and Kenneth Omeruo drops in to cover the space in case he is beaten. First time pass to Diego Forlan out on the left of Uruguay’s attack, who is all alone. He controls and crashes the ball into the roof of the net. 2–1 Uruguay. From start to end of the counter, Efe Ambrose is nowhere in sight, yet the ball was lost on the HALFWAY LINE.
That goal effectively puts Nigeria out of the tournament. It gets worse though.
In the final group game, it’s the world champions Spain. Surely a time to be vigilant and organized in defence, right? Right? Spain race into the lead pretty early, when Efe Ambrose gets drawn out of position and is too narrow because Andres Iniesta has drifted into a central area. Spain work the ball around in midfield before slipping in Barcelona wing back Jordi Alba on the edge of the penalty box, up from the back and attacking the space. The whole time, Ambrose fails to spot his advancing run, and when Alba runs onto the pass, he makes a laughable attempt at intercepting, gets bypassed and Spain go ahead.
The second goal is much like the first, a result of poor positioning. Spain get the ball out wide to Pedro, who has switched flanks. Ambrose is too narrow, and also does nothing to close down either ball or man, and this forces Oboabona to move out of position to stop Pedro. Things are compounded because Ambrose does not make the opposite movement to drop into the space left by the center back, but just stands still, leaving substitute Fernando Torres with a free header.
I chose to highlight incidents at the Confederations Cup because these are the caliber of football matches the Super Eagles must seek to win to establish itself as a foremost footballing entity. Now that we are Brazil-bound, this issue must be looked into closely. Sadly, Solomon Kwambe is not of sufficient quality, and as the Big Boss has stated, squad harmony trumps individual ability for him. These considerations seem to indicate that Ambrose will continue to man the post. One can only hope the technical crew pick up on these shortcomings and act.
Up the Super Eagles!
