CHAN 2018: This is not our re-Ali-ty
The ongoing Africa Nations Championship in Morocco have been a largely exciting spectacle. It’s been hard not to be impressed by the flair and cohesion of Zambia, the disciplined counterattacking of Namibia and Morocco’s clinical edge.
All of that though has been mostly missing in Nigeria’s play; four points from six is a respectable enough haul, but the football has been rather forgettable, even accounting for the handful of missed chances against Rwanda.
It will now take an extraordinary set of results for Salisu Yusuf’s side to fail to make the next round. However, there will be tougher tests, and this team has a glaring problem in the attacking third.
Sunday Faleye has been a bright young thing, but his flair and improvisation will not suffice. The rest of the front four is a smorgasbord of ill-fitting parts; allow me to explain.
The team plays nominally in a 4–2–3–1, with Anthony Okpotu leading the line, Emeka Ogbugh on the opposite flank to the intrepid Faleye, and Rabiu Ali in the hole.
Okpotu is an interesting player: top scorer last year in the NPFL, his finishing when through on goal is really good, but here he is tasked with occupying both centre-backs, a responsibility he is not quite suited to because (a) he isn’t particularly quick, and (b) his movement is a tad unimaginative.
This means the service into him has to be precise, and considering the composition of the front four, he is arguably the wrong sort of striker: Ogbugh plays rather too wide to either be a goal threat himself or link up with Okpotu, while Ali is…well, Ali.
By that, I mean that he is old. The oldest in the tournament in fact, per the official record.
Ali may be a legend at Kano Pillars, but his creative output has never been superb. Through his career, he has excelled more with his sudden bursts into goalscoring positions, and his ability to strike the ball very cleanly.
Now 37, he simply does not have the legs anymore to get up into the penalty area consistently. Also, being that he is not exactly the type of consistently carve open defences, he isn’t running the midfield either. He is simply in the way.
The question then is: why does Salisu Yusuf keep playing him?
As my colleague Fisayo Dairo (who is in Morocco presently) has pointed out time and again, this team played its best football at the NPFL Invitational in December in the game Rabiu Ali was absent from. A front quartet of Ogbugh, Faleye, Dayo Ojo and Victor Mbaoma tore into Enyimba on the day, interchanging positions ceaselessly, and could have been out of sight in the opening 30 minutes.
Sure the preparation for this tournament was not the absolute best it could have been, but we know this group is capable of better football. If for nothing else, the mere fact that all four are in the squad. It would be a shame if we never get to see it.
P.S.
Being the legendary ‘jinxer’ that I am, I fully expect Rabiu Ali to go ahead and net a hat-trick against Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday.
