Keshi’s Courage Has Eagles Soaring

Nigerian football was not in a good place when Stephen Keshi took over as coach of the Super Eagles in October 2011. Failure to beat Guinea in a decisive 2012 Nations Cup qualifier in Abuja meant Nigeria had failed to qualify for the first time since 1986 and marked the end of the disappointing two year tenure of Samson Siasia. Keshi came in with a clear, daunting mandate to, not only rebuild a disjointed team, but to also secure qualification for both the 2013 Nations Cup and the 2014 World Cup.

As Nigeria completed a 4-1 aggregate defeat of Ethiopia to claim a World Cup spot in Calabar last weekend, it’s safe to say the former national team captain has delivered on all fronts.

Before completing their successful passage to Brazil, the Super Eagles had not only reached the 2013 Nations Cup finals, but they won the whole shebang in South Africa earlier this year, giving Nigeria its first continental title since 1994, back when Keshi captained the side.

More importantly, Keshi has built a new team, founded on talent, youth, hard work, and an unflinching commitment to the cause. And he’s done it in the most unconventional of ways, picking players solely on merit, with little regard for reputation and track record, and without relying on the established “big names” that have been the bane of Nigeria’s failings in recent times.

Success on the field doesn’t mean it’s all been smooth sailing for Keshi, though. Nigerians had, for many years, yearned for a coach who would get those “tired, old legs” out of the Super Eagles and one would have expected that Keshi’s approach – picking young, hungry “unknown” players from Europe and the domestic league – would have all but sealed his popularity amongst the Eagles’ faithful. One would have been wrong. Sometimes, when you give the people what they want, you can find that they don’t actually want it anymore.

The criticism that followed the announcement of Keshi’s Nations Cup squad - a bunch that included six home-based players and 17 players who had never been to a major tournament – was a perfect case in point. No tired old legs, only young hungry boys, just as the people had demanded. Yet, Keshi was suddenly the bad guy, risking Nigeria’s success in the name of “experimenting”. Not since Clemens Westerhof took a new team to Algeria in 1990 had Nigeria been to the finals with a squad so inexperienced and, as the Nations Cup finals kicked off in January, the fans, the media and even the federation were all skeptical.

But Keshi bravely stuck to his guns, insisting that is team had what it takes to make the nation proud and keeping his players focused on the job at hand. Then he rode out even more criticism as his team drew its first two games in South Africa – to Burkina Faso and Zambia - and only started winning over the doubters when they beat favourites Ivory Coast in the quarter finals. Two games later, the Eagles were African champions.

There were bumps on the road to World Cup qualification as well, as the Eagles struggled to find goals in matches against Namibia, Kenya, and Malawi. Amazingly, Keshi’s team managed to score just once in each of their first 5 matches in this group – two wins and three draws in which all their goals came after the 80th minute. That they required late equalisers to get points out of seemingly easy games against Kenya, at home, and Namibia certainly didn’t inspire confidence. But a comfortable 2-0 win against Malawi in the last game ultimately put them through the group, and set up the Ethiopia tie.

Through it all, Keshi, has consistently demonstrated exemplary leadership and courage. It certainly took guts to leave out the likes of Peter Odemwingie – much to his surprise – and Obafemi Martins, but to then go ahead and put his trust in untried players like Ogenyi Onazi, Kenneth Omeruo and Sunday Mba, all of who played key roles in the Nations Cup win, took it to another level.

To be fair, circumstance also played a hand in forming Keshi’s team. For instance, it took an injury to captain Joseph Yobo for Omeruo to get a chance at the Nations Cup, but not many coaches would have then kept the 19-year-old – who’d never even played at senior level before then - in the team even after Yobo recovered. In the same light, Fegor Ogude was Keshi’s first choice in defensive midfield, until suspension kept him out of the quarter finals and 20-year-old Onazi stepped in and proved an obvious upgrade. As for Mba, the Enugu Rangers midfielder who scored the winner against Ivory Coast and the cup clinching goal in the final, Keshi thrust him in to replace the under-performing Nosa Igiebor, who had started the first two games.

Keshi’s biggest impact though, may well be the effect he has had on the attitude of the team’s best player, Chelsea midfielder John Mikel Obi, who has grown in maturity over the past two years and is now one of the clear leaders of this talented group. It’s proved a mutually beneficial relationship for both coach and player; Mikel gets to express himself more freely than he does at Chelsea, and Keshi gets a talented player fully committed to the team’s objectives.

To be sure, Keshi still has his detractors – not least those who think Yobo should still have a place in the team –and the Super Eagles certainly still have room for improvement. The Ethiopia win last weekend, like many of the World Cup qualifiers, wasn’t the best of performances, even if the result was just right. Then again, the 2-2 draw with Italy two days later – played with seven regulars rested – showed just how far this team has progressed in such a short time, and how much further they could yet go.

And that, without any doubt, is down to the stellar work of Stephen Keshi.

Deschamps Right On The Money

Not many people thought France had what it takes to overturn a two-goal deficit heading into the second leg of Les Bleus’ World Cup qualifier against Ukraine on Tuesday night. And I’d bet even fewer would have wagered anything on Mamadou Sakho grabbing two of the goals that would send Didier Deschamps’ side through to the finals in Brazil next year.

Yet all the credit has to go to Deschamps himself. Embattled after a shambolic first leg showing, the former national team captain certainly, on this occasion, demonstrated the courage, decisiveness and perseverance required to stand out at international level.
First, he changed his selection, making no less than 5 changes to the eleven that started in Kiev on Friday. One of those, the suspended Laurent Koscielny, was of course enforced, and you could argue that some of the others left the manager little or no choice than to axe them. Eric Abidal, Samir Nasri, Loic Remy ad Olivier Giroud also made way, allowing Deschamps to name a new centre-back pair in Raphael Varane and Sakho, midfielders Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Valbuena, and striker Karim Benzema.

Second, the new faces also meant Deschamps had to tweak his formation, playing Cabaye a little deeper between the hard-running and slightly more advanced Paul Pogba and Blaise Matuidi, while Valbuena and Ribery provided support for Benzema upfront. Of course, the two-goal deficit left him with no choice but to adopt a much more positive approach, and Deschamps decisively sent his team out to do just that right from the off.

But his biggest success was surely at the back where Varane and Sakho both put in commanding performances. The Liverpool man was particularly impressive – the two goals aside – and on the back of this performance, it’s hard to see how Deschamps can leave him out of his starting team in the months ahead. If a bit-part role at PSG had hitherto threatened his place in the team, it seems his recent move to England may well have secured it.

Deschamps would have been particularly pleased that the three goals came from two of his “new faces” – Benzema got the other from an offside position, after having a good goal wrongly ruled out for offside – but he is experienced enough to know that there’s still a lot of improvement required if France are to make an impact in Brazil. Benzema, despite his goal, still didn’t quite convince – Giroud looked sharper in his short cameo – and the French still laboured to find that crucial third goal despite playing against 10 men for most of the second half.

Nevertheless, this victory probably gives some indication about the way forward for Deschamps. France is certainly not lacking in quality; it’s more a question of finding the right blend and picking the right tactics for the right occasion – and of course, rooting out the indiscipline and disharmony that brought much ridicule to the French camp in South Africa.

Brazil is still a long way off, but one would expect a good run from any team that can boast a spine of Hugo Lloris in goal; any two of Varane, Sakho and Koscielny at centre back; Pogba, Cabaye and Matuidi in midfield, and an in-form Ribery upfront.

Deschamps will have to keep making those brave decisions to make it work.

In Defence of the Defence

Is it human nature to blame the unfamiliar? To distrust the different? I'll leave the behavioural questions to the social scientists, but that certainly seems the case when it comes to Liverpool Football Club and tactics.

I'll get to all the whining and grumbling in some quarters that has followed Brendan Rodgers' recent shift to a three man defence in a minute. But it's worth noting that we've been down this road before.

It's barely nine years ago that Rafael Benitez swept in to Melwood with his Spanish ways and started the dastardly deed of switching Liverpool from man-to-man to zonal marking at set-pieces.

For all the hue and cry that followed, at least from those talking head analysts on TV, you'd have thought zonal defence had just become number eight on the list of deadly sins. It would have been understandable had the new system suddenly caused Liverpool to leak tons of goals from set pieces. It didn't. And even if it had, you would expect that after a couple of years, once the benefits of the new system had been evaluated, the finger pointing would abate.

Yet, four years later, as Rafa's team reached its peak, every goal Liverpool conceded was still blamed on zonal marking. Not its execution or individual error, but the system itself.

Granted, there could still be a valid basis for such an indictment. Except that the evidence did not bear it out. First, in two of his six seasons at Anfield - 05/06 and 06/07 - Benitez's team conceded fewer goals from set pieces than any team in the Premier League (Opta) and were 4th best in three other seasons.

Second, not one pundit ever blamed man-to-man marking - as a system - for any goals conceded by teams employing that tactic, even though they often conceded even more goals than a zonal marking team.

Zonal marking was unusual and different, so it had to be wrong, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

Then there was the double pivot - two "defensive" midfielders in front of the back four. It was Rafa Benitez, again, that first brought this to Liverpool, when he started pairing the Argentine Javier Mascherano with Xabi Alonso in front of the Liverpool back four in 2007. Alonso is, of course, more than just a defensive midfielder, but granted, he played deep enough to qualify.

Benitez was relentlessly criticized for being too defensive. Why play so many defensive players, even against weaker teams at Anfield?

And again the system - not its execution - was blamed for every bad result. Of course, double pivots are pretty much the norm these days. You certainly wouldn't hear such criticism of the system now.

Not so in 2008. Spain, for instance, who were also criticized for pairing Alonso and Busquets at the start of the World Cup in 2010, did not play a double pivot at the Euros that year, favouring Marcos Senna ahead of Alonso.

So, it didn't matter that Liverpool's double pivot allowed the full backs to contribute much more to the attacking play, or that, in 08/09, when this "defensive" set-up was at its best, Liverpool scored more goals than any team in the Premier League. Much easier to point the finger at the unfamiliar, the different, the double pivot as the cause of all Liverpool's woes in the latter Benitez years.

Which brings me to Brendan Rodgers and the 3-5-2. It's now been 5 league matches since a combination of injury (to Glen Johnson), a surfeit of centre backs and the need to fit in two in-form strikers, compelled the manager to change tack and jettison his preferred 4-2-3-1.

On the whole, 3 wins one draw and one defeat would suggest its not been a disaster. True, the second half troubles that characterized the first five games of the season, haven't been completely eliminated. But it's fair to say performance levels had improved significantly up to the West Brom game - the best of the season so far - and even in defeat at the Emirates, difficult as it was, there were signs of progress.

But it is that loss to Arsenal that has got many fans questioning the very notion of playing three at the back, and seemingly blaming this for any negatives we've seen over the past few weeks.

But is this just another case of blaming the unfamiliar? Has this different system with 3 centre backs really been any worse than the usual back four we are accustomed to?

Well, as far as performance and results go, it certainly hasn't, even if the return of Luis Suarez was always expected to improve the team regardless. Indeed, it would greatly surprise me if anyone suggests that we played better football in the first 5 matches, than we have since.

The one stick that has consistently been used to bash the back-three formation is the fact that the team hasn't kept a clean sheet since switching formation, conceding 7 times in the last 5 games. Of course, a back four had also let in three goals in the two games right before the switch, but its instructive to look beyond the bare stats when considering those numbers.

Of the 7 goals the back three have let in, three have come from long range shots; two from free kicks; one from a penalty and one (Santi Cazorla at Arsenal) from a cross into the box.

Now, while one could argue that the defence - or the midfield ahead of them - could have done a better job in preventing those long range shots, conceding shots from distance is hardly a consequence of playing three at the back. The same could happen with a back four. More often than not, you'd prefer your opponents to shoot from distance - rather than close up - especially with a shot stopper like Simon Mignolet between the posts. He did reach Ki's shot at Sunderland, but couldn't quite direct his deflection wide enough. As for the other two shots, from Yohan Cabaye and Aaron Ramsey, they were simply unstoppable.

Likewise, while it is disappointing to concede from free kicks - basically high balls into the box - when there are three centre backs on the field, it's not a consequence of playing a back three since pretty much the entire team drops into the box and gets organised for the set play. Dwight Gayle for Crystal Palace, and Paul Dummett at Newcastle profited from poor marking at free kicks, just as Dejan Lovren did for Southampton when we played a back four of centre backs in week 5.

The penalty against West Brom? Sure, it denied a clean sheet, but again, I don't see how that is a consequence of playing a back three. Back fours concede penalties too.

That leaves us with the one goal scored in the box from open play - Cazorla's volley at the Emirates last week - which would be the only one that can be put down to the decision to play a back three, because it clearly exploited a weakness in wide areas - worsened by Cissokho's poor showing - that is a clear shortcoming of playing a back three.

But every system has its weakness, and every system can be fallible when execution is below par or concentration drops - as it did when Swansea twice cut through the middle of a four man defence to score goals in the box from open play at the Liberty Stadium in week 4.

The back three aside, we've learnt a few things about Rodgers' 3-5-2: it's enabled Liverpool to play both Sturridge and Suarez in a position where they can wreak the most havoc; it's allowed Rodgers to keep three central midfielders in that key area in the middle of the park - either in a 1-2 or 2-1 pattern; and, for it to work well, both wing backs need to be both aggressive on the offensive and resilient in defence.

The latter point - proven by its absence at the Emirates - is the one facet of this system that we are yet to see. Jose Enrique seemed well suited for the role in the League Cup game at Old Trafford - when Glen Johnson was still out injured. When the England right back did return, against West Brom, Enrique was out injured, and both players missed the Emirates match. I think the outcome could well have been different had both played, and it would be nice to see just how things would work with both wing backs back to full fitness.

Rodgers may well return to a four man backline against Fulham at the weekend, but I doubt this is the last we’ve seen of the three-man defence.