Eagles lack quality bench players

Ex-Nigeria defender , Bolaji Douglas, says a lack of quality players on the Super Eagles’ bench cost the team dearly in Monday’s 2014 World Cup round of 16 clash against France in Brasilia.

The former BCC Lions captain said immediately Ogenyi Onazi was stretchered out after a violent tackle by Blaise Matuidi, it was evident coach Stephen Keshi had no player on the bench, who could play an influential role in midfield.

“Too bad we lost to an experienced team. We lost the game the minute Onazi came off. To be honest, I have my reservations about the quality of the team, especially the bench. Against France, it turned out we had nothing on the bench. France looked to the bench for a change but we did not have that luxury,” the Ireland-based engineer told our correspondent on the telephone on Wednesday.

“It was always going to come back to haunt us. We shouldn’t have gone to the World Cup with some of the players in the squad. I don’t want to get into this but loading your team with players who hardly did anything all season was always going to be exposed when it mattered most.

“There were a couple of players that could have made this team stronger but only Keshi knows why he did not take them. Kudos to him at least he equalled the records of the foreign coaches before him but he could have done better.”

The 1990 Africa Cup Winners Cup winner added that technical factors also worked against not just the Eagles but African representatives in Brazil.

Douglas said, “The Eagles could have done better with quality in the middle; we had a good game plan but lacked the personnel to execute it. It’s so annoying the way African teams keep conceding goals from set-pieces and we can’t make use of set-pieces.

“I couldn’t believe I watched (Ahmed) Musa played our corner-kicks five times before we realised we had to change the taker. When a team does not have a good set-piece plan and hardly makes use of them, their chances of winning is reduced. We had France where we wanted them but just could not do the damage; we did not have enough to do that.”