Olympic Final

Olympic Final

Not really NZ football based but we were there so ill post in here.
Can someone who has a better understanding of the international game explain to me why Nigeria always does well at age group and in particular Olympic competitions ( from what i know they have done quite well at the Olympics historically) yet they don't do as well at senior level?
0-0 after 4mins

Africa is the most toughest world cup confederation to qualify from of all the confedations. They have to actually have to win a big group full of unpredictable results. There is no chance for runners up and other nations will purposely lose to prevent their nearest rival from winning the group. :) Most african teams are solid and strong but it's hard to dominate the confederation for a long enough time to excel on the international senior scene because another couple of teams pull the dominated team back into the pack.

The Cameroon team is another team with potential but it's a hard route from Africa. In fact they have as many team as the UEFA confederation but only half the World cup final spots as the UEFA. So makes it hard for any one african team develop international presence and excel. I almost willing to back African teams are head to head as strong as the UEFA teams but lack the structure and the money and not enough defending exposure to quality attacks. You could almost bet that the next greatest football player can be from Africa if he gets the lucky break in the European leagues. More and more UEFA clubs are noticing the African players and can get a really good bargain. The African clubs have a mixture of the poor, corrupt, bad refereeing, internal wrangings and the brutal rivalry with weak domestic structure. They have improved but a long way off.

You think about all the African teams that have reasonable well at the World cup since Cameroon semi-final in 1990 and other exciting teams that had potential but just missing the next stage.

Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Egypt, Ivory Coast,Morocco,Togo, Angola, and Tunisia have great teams but without consistent international competition outside their confederation they get shown up in their defence quality.

Add in Mali and Congo to that group.

After Messi's penetrating runs into the box ripped Brazil to shreds in the semi I thought they would get more than one past Nigeria but the Nigerian defense did well. I wouldn't be surprised if we see these two teams again in the 2010 World Cup final.

Peaks and troughs. Messi and the Argentina team grow another limb when they play Brazil. It's sort of more important to beat Brazil than win the Final. Brazil u23 are always a bit on the slow side in defence if the midfield gets owned by a really good side. It's how their two blocks are organised. If very rare that they get owned in the midfield but if someone like Messi or Zizane owed them in the midfield then defence get peppered as the defenders push 5 metres up to cover the 10 metres gap by their scattered midfield.

Yes Nigeria did well, but senior national squads are whole another level above their olympic squad.

In Brazil, you have about 4 or 5 teams you could place in between their olympic team and full senior team. Nigeria may have maybe two teams between their olympic and full senior team. We have like almost one whole team between the olympic and full senior team.

Like how many oly-whites (other than the overagers) are in the call up recently? And we are a nothing national team compare to Brazil or Nigeria.

(btw I mean teams of 11 not squads)

The world cup is like only 2 years away so you might see about 25% of the olympic team in the 2014 world cup more likely.