Nigeria coach Gernot Rohr is hoping Ahmed Musa will again step up to the plate in their deciding match against Argentina on Tuesday, but is quick to admit that the Super Eagles forward is no Lionel Messi \u2026 yet.<\/p>\n
The Leicester City man proved the difference as Nigeria beat Iceland 2-0 at Volgograd Arena on Friday evening, scoring twice in the second half as his pace wreaked havoc for the defenders.<\/p>\n
Iceland looked a lot more comfortable against Messi in their opening game, but Rohr has warned not to get carried away by Musa\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusa is not Lionel Messi yet,\u201d the German told kicker. \u201cSomebody said \u2018Lionel Musa\u2019 yesterday, but he\u2019s not there yet. I hope he can do it one day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rohr will need Musa firing on all cylinders in St Petersburg, and has warned that his players are in for a serious challenge as Argentina look to save face after a 3-0 humiliation against Croatia.<\/p>\n
\u201cArgentina have one more day to prepare. That\u2019s an advantage for them,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it could be the other way around because we have the psychological effect on our side because we came back from a defeat on the opening day.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost teams also lost the second match, but we turned it around. It wasn\u2019t easy. The psychological advantage now is that we have a positive approach. And it\u2019s the other way around for Argentina. We bank on that a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Messi more than most will be up for a shot at redemption, having come in for severe criticism for his two performances to date, but Rohr warns that focusing on just one player could lead to serious problems for the Super Eagles.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not the only key. If you look at the team, they have so many good players. You only have to look at where they are playing. Aguero and Otamendi at Manchester City. Higuain and Dybala at Juve and so it continues. Individually, Argentina are among the best teams in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were unfortunate to miss that penalty against Iceland. Argentina are not only Messi, but he\u2019s the most dangerous, that\u2019s obvious. Moreover, he is a proud person and he does not want to go out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will turn their disappointment into a good aggressiveness and motivation. And I must be careful after such a win. That glowing, I need to keep the lads grounded. Other than Mikel and Moses my players lack experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
So how does the coach rate his team\u2019s chances of getting something from the game and knocking Argentina out?<\/p>\n
\u201cFifty-fifty. A draw could already be enough, even though we are not allowed to play for a draw. We are not allowed to and we can\u2019t do it. Not with Africans, and certainly not with our young team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria coach Gernot Rohr is hoping Ahmed Musa will again step up to the plate in their deciding match against Argentina on Tuesday, but is quick to admit that the Super Eagles forward is no Lionel Messi \u2026 yet. The Leicester City man proved the difference as Nigeria beat Iceland 2-0 at Volgograd Arena on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1054,884,768,92,998],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-ahmed-musa","tag-argentina","tag-lionel-messi","tag-nigeria","tag-rohr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1309,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions\/1309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}