ASSISTANT National Technical Director of the Nigeria Football Federation, Mr. James Peters, has said that the Super Eagles, though good for the continent, was not ready to face teams at world championships.
According to Mr. Peters, “the team’s unorganized defense” was the main reason why the Eagles fell to a 3-0 loss to the Spanish national team in Brazil on Sunday.
“Presently, we can say that we have a team for African competitions but not for world championships,’’ told journalists on Monday in Abuja..
“All in all, the players did the best they could but when you analyse them based on the departments, the defence let them down in all occasions, in terms of organisation.
“The three goals they conceded was the fault of the defenders; the first goal was due to overlapping of four of them inside the box.
“The second was another defender, Godfrey Oboabona’s bad positioning and bad marking, while the third was a pre-planned free kick from the Spaniards when they saw the leak in our defense,’’ he said.
Peters however said that the team would excel in the next World Cup qualifier against Malawi in September.
“Talking about the next World Cup Qualifier against Malawi, we have a team to win and excel at the continental level and to qualify for the World Cup in 2014.
“But after qualification, we must prepare to face and beat the world,’’ he said.
Peters added that the technical crew needed to perfect the defense and get good strikers to convert goal scoring chances.
“We need to step up our game, in view of this, the technical crew needs to make the defence stronger and perfect converting chances in front of goal.
“This is because the strikers in the team presently lack the techniques of goal scoring and we have so many strikers out there that can do what we want for us.
“We need strikers like Victor Anichebe, Osaze Odemwingie and some others that can convert chances for us.
“So, we should be able to look beyond what we have now, if we want to compete with the world’s best teams,’’ he added.