By Daily Sports on December 5, 2017

The countdown to next year’s FIFA World Cup scheduled to kick off in June in Russia has begun with the frenzy that has greeted the world cup draws which held last week. 

As we all well know by now, Nigeria has got a tough Group D draw where they are to play Giants Argentina, Croatia and Iceland. 

My feeling after seeing the draws is one of indifference, largely, because I expect all the teams that make it to the world cup to be very competitive. At the World Cup, there are rarely easy teams, and expect Russia 2018 to be no different. 

If there was perhaps an element of surprise in my mind, like in many minds in Nigeria, it is how frequently the Super Eagles draw Argentina at this stage of the World Cup. 

There is some sense of resignation that Argentina is Nigeria’s bogey team at the group stage of the World Cup, given that the country has never beaten Argentina in a World Cup game before. Nigeria has lost, in fact, all the group matches it has had against Argentina in the FIFA World Cup. 

The recent 3-2 friendly match win over Argentina might not have done enough to give be confidence that this time, with Lionel Messi,  who was absent for the friendly game, around,  Nigeria can finally down Argentina in a world Cup game. 

The hope of progress from Group D seems to lie on the perceived ability of the Eagles to tame the other two teams in the group. Nigerian fans seem to have enjoyed hearing officials of these teams talking highly of the Eagles.  

Recently, Davor Suker, the Croatian football legend and current president of the country’s football Federation, spoke to the BBC and said Nigeria has a very formidable team and that the country would be strong at the World Cup, especially seeing that Nigeria didn’t lose a game in qualifying. 

There’s something psychologically uplifting to hear that people fear your team. But it can also be deceptive to rest on one's oars in preparing for the Mundial. 

Suker’s words, as those of other rivals mean little. Top teams will always pay respect to the opposition. Nigeria’s Super Eagles manager Gernot Rohr is no naive man. He knows this. And hopefully he will continue to prepare his team as expertly as he can. 

He will know that the opponents are going to study Nigeria closely and be prepared to hurt the Eagles. We can glimpse this threat in the words of Suker who said:

“We have to analyse Nigeria in detail, yet we are aware that they have finished the qualifying round without a single defeat. They are young, led by a German coach.” 

Talking about preparations, there seems to be some discomfort in some quarters about how Rohr is continuing to search for good players that could possibly join the current crop that he is working with. 

The argument against this seems to be that this could distract the current players and threaten team harmony. 

The thing though is that the World Cup is still far away, and there shouldn’t be anything bad in the coach trying to make the team better by looking for players that would increase his tactical options. 

Players have to live with the competition for places. That’s football. 

Besides, there could be injuries to key players just before the World Cup, and this would make a large pool of good players to choose from necessary.

Source Daily Sports

Posted December 5, 2017

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