U17's World Cup - Nigeria

TheJam2009-11-06 10:35:05

That's the sort of thinking that pretty much sums up why it has taken so long for us to progress beyond the group stages of a tournament...

No, it's not. What prevents our progress is dearth of talent, lack of technical and tactical ability to foot it with the best at the highest level, and that's still going to take years of hard work and commitment to overcome.

But like Smithy said, the general signs of our style of play were very positive, we fought hard and showed good mental attitude on the pitch, and achieved a historic result. We could not have realistically hoped for anything more than this, in fact getting out of the group seemed implausible at the start.

Not sure that I would call it a "dearth of talent"so much as a failure to correctly identify and develop talent - at least historically.

Who are the "dearth of talent" you talk about coming through.

Bear in mind that I know nothing about the game of football or how to play it properly aside from kicking a ball around.

New Zealand teams: Can't dribble without losing the ball to a tackle, generally can't turn/guard the ball from a tackle, can't pass without the ball being intercepted, can't cross halfway except by booting the ball forward hoping that someone will latch onto it (which never happens).

Regardless, I've woken early to watch the U-17 campaign in Nigeria, and watched the girls in the agonising 1-1 draw against Canada last year. And I'll be there yelling at the ROF at our one shot for glory.

I'll watch because NZ is involved, but we don't really seem capable of playing an organised game of football. Hopefully this improves but I presume it will take years to get better?

Well, what I mean by dearth of talent is general lack of significant number of players who can regularly compete at the highest level. Of course there are a lot of young guys out there who have talent, but without better facilities, coaching, and general footballing infrastructure, we're going to struggle to develop that talent where it needs to be for us to be more competetive internationally.

How you do that is another topic in itself.

Not quite right - two years ago, we lost all our group games, not scoring any and conceding 13 (I think, off the top of my head). This time around, we've only lost one game out of four we've played. Granted, we were outplayed and had a fair amount of luck in the process, but the fact we could scrape out results while being outclassed shows we've made improvements. Things won't get radically better any time soon, but gradual improvement in competetiveness is very welcome in the meantime.

Bloody good tournament.

The Nigerians seems to bustle us off the ball.  I think that's down to speed and experience.

I really don't understand any negativity whatsoever. This tournament was a fantastic success and for the lads to create history by becoming the first ever NZ team to reach the knockout stages of a FIFA tournament is some achievement. But no doubt the miserable f**kers loved the fact we got done this morning just so they could have a moan.

As for the game itself, total domination for Nigeria. They are a very classy side with some highly gifted players. But i think most of our players can hold their heads high, as they ran themselves into the ground in stifling heat and hostile conditions.

Well done lads. You have done NZ football proud.
Buffon II2009-11-06 16:31:30

I think alot of those Nigerian boys would push some of our senior players off the ball. The African players seem to physically mature a lot faster than our kids in New Zealand.

Guess you'll be able to go for a family trip to your condo in Italy to celebrate

Im a proud kiwi. and inspired by the boys making history and progressing to the second round. Yes the end result is we got knocked out today. But never the less..we should be proud.

Pfft, Nigeria is steaks ahead of many teams over there. They are similar in strength to the U17 Brazil team in NZ99. Expect to see them in the final. There would be stronger teams than ours who will be defending just as much as our boys have been doing against them. So the fact that we were able to get to the second round and get to face quality youth players is awesome. Even if our boys played to their personal best, the pass speed and the teamwork of the Nigeria was hard to contain.

james dean2009-11-07 01:37:11

age scandal - Nigerian captain alleged to be 25

So it's more than just "maturing early" then. This is not a new claim or problem. It will be interesting if anything comes of it. I suspect not. Too many worms too many cans.

impressed by our efforts and results in the tournament - to qualify for last 16 was a great achievement

they have a 25 year old and Burkina Faso have a 14 year old.. makes ya wonder 

interested to hear thoughts on who stood out amongst those players?

Murie and Turipa were the picks for me. Spragg was disappointing after all I'd heard about him; I'm sure he can be a lot better than that.

I thought Turipa had a good tournament, which was interesting because when I've seen him training with the Phoenix and at National Secondary Schools tournament in Nelson he was average bordering on poor.

Think that the strikers didn't do much but guess that comes down to go forward.. they worked hard though

Thought Andy Bevin played well.

This boy sacrificed a lot coming to Auckland, being available for 99% of all the games for 3 months prior to the tournament for the NZ team, scoring twice in their last game in Australia.
He is a fantastic footballer with good skills and got ousted by bureaucracy.
I feel sorry for him because he deserved better and would have done well given the opportunity.
However, there's obviously a lot to be said for being constantly injured for most of those three months and/or hiding, playing school football and waltzing onto the field without putting in the hard yards.
Good luck to him in his career but perhaps he needs to leave NZ to be appreciated.

Those MRI scans are +- 2 years, so even if the kid was playing as a 14 years old, then he would be about 21 year old player. The thing is in the Africa, there are many people that has no birth certificate as well as having many people not having an idea of the time of the year of even knowing the year as they live life day to day. A concept of time is lacking for some of the locals, because they don't have a job or things to attend to.

I am not making an excuse for the deception if any but some of players not have a clue about their birthday because their parents don't have much of a clue either and their birth may not even be done by a medical authority but maybe by the local village midwife.

However, a 9 year gap is very bad with no room of error and I would be concern of the fair play element by this player. Can he not count the number of seasons that he has played?

Also, not every player are tested, I think that about 3 or 4 players randomly selected from each squad. I understood that some african teams made sure that everything is above broad before this competition because of the past allegations.AllWhitebelievr2009-11-11 20:04:15

Nigeria v Switzerland in the final.

Saw the highlights of both games. Nigeria will bolt in.

 

Oh.....

Not surprised. Well actually,I am,Im surprised its only the captain who is over age.

Guess the horse just broke it's leg!

Define proof of age. Birth certificates can be faked. So are you saying that the MRI scan should be done on every player in the tournament? Pretty costly,but probably worth it if you want to be rid of this sort of thing. Am sure FIFA would want to just test the entire Nigerian team and not bother with most other countries,but they cant do that for obvious reasons of it being seen as unfairly targetting them.

Switzerland beat Nigeria in the final 1 - 0