Between The Posts. . . Nigeria’s weakest link between best Ogedegbe, Francis Uzoho and Amas Obasogie

Francis Uzoho

Two days ago, the Super Eagles of Nigeria played against the Crocodiles of Lesotho. Ordinarily that should not take centre stage in any sports conversation this weekend, beyond reporting the anticipated ‘massacre’ of the minnows from the Southern part of Africa.

The sad story is that Nigeria ‘lost’ the match. Struggling to get a ‘draw’ in a match played on home ground, on the superb turf of the best football ground in Nigeria, the Akpabio International Stadium, Uyo, must be counted as a ‘loss’.

That match engages my thoughts this day, taking my mind away from the postponement of the 1st Lee Evans Memorial Athletics Meet that should have happened next weekend but would have to wait till 2024 now for a more befitting event to be organised.

On the football match, I am unable to add a strong voice to any technical discourse because no television channels showed it, as a result of new regulations on broadcast rights under FIFA’s Giovanni Infantino. The match was only broadcast online via a special dedicated FIFA channel. So, I had to manage to catch some of it on my phone with the pictures freezing intermittently throughout, making it uninteresting to watch and technically impossible to analyse.

So, I am unable to do justice to any forensic examination of the match, what were technically right or wrong with the Super Eagles.
Be that as it may, the result of the match and the presence of a particular player in the team’s line-up interest me. Some two or more weeks before the match the main discussion on several football platforms was on what was considered the ‘weakest link’ in the Super Eagles team – goalkeeping.

Nigeria’s first choice these past few years, Francis Uzoho’s scorecard has not been very flattering.