Serbia coach Mladena Krstajic says\u00a0 his team will have to raise their game to overcome a physical battle against Nigeria in their friendly match at The Hive Stadium\u00a0 in London on Tuesday,\u00a0 but believes they can play themselves to victory.<\/p>\n
Serbia\u00a0 lost\u00a0 2-1 to Morocco\u00a0\u00a0 in their Russia 2018 World Cup\u00a0 preparatory fixture\u00a0 at\u00a0 Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino in Turin\u00a0 on Friday, and unhappy Eagles manager Krstajic has told his charges to go out there and beat Nigeria\u2019s Super Eagles.<\/p>\n
Nigeria put\u00a0 Poland\u00a0 to the sword \u00a0\u00a0after Victor Moses converted a penalty in their World Cup warm-up clash at the Municipal Stadium\u00a0 in Wroclaw on Friday.<\/p>\n
Krstajic will\u00a0 look to adopt a familiar 4-3-3 formation for today\u2019s game with Fulham striker Aleksandar Mitrovic or PAOK\u2019s Aleksandar Prijovic leading\u00a0 the scorer of the team\u2019s\u00a0 only goal against Morocco Dusan Tadic and Filip Kostic in the attack.<\/p>\n
Nigeria coach Gernot Rohr is likely to stick with the\u00a0 4-4-1-1 formation which helped his team\u00a0 to nullify the threat of Poland\u2019s Bayern Munich talisman Robert Lewandowski, West Brom midfielder\u00a0 Grzegorz Krychowiak and Borussia Dortmund right-back \u0141ukasz Piszczek against Serbia in London.<\/p>\n
Former Werder Bremen defender Krstajic, who is\u00a0 desperate for a win to instil confidence in his team ahead of Russia 2018,\u00a0 urged them to\u00a0 go all out for a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cNigeria have a solid team with\u00a0 many\u00a0 of the players playing\u00a0 for\u00a0 European clubs,\u201d HotSport.rs quoted the former Schalke 04\u00a0 star as saying on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect a good reaction from our players and I think with good concentration, we can achieve a good result.<\/p>\n
\u201cI repeat, the most important\u00a0 thing is the result, everything else is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cNigeria have\u00a0 a lot of good players, we expect a very\u00a0 tough\u00a0 game, physically very demanding. So, we must prepare well and make everything look better than against Morocco.\u201d<\/p>\n
Southampton\u2019s Dusan Tadic also admits they face\u00a0\u00a0 physical\u00a0\u00a0 opponents in London.<\/p>\n
Nigeria have\u00a0 a lot of good players, we expect a very physically game,\u201d\u00a0 Alo.rs\u00a0 quoted the\u00a0 forward as saying. \u201cThey\u00a0 have players in Leicester and\u00a0 Chelsea, they are physically dominant, fast and strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0 Nigeria captain Mikel\u00a0 Obi\u00a0 has ruled himself out of playing in\u00a0 the encounter\u00a0 as he is yet to resolve his work permit issue in China.<\/p>\n
The Tianjin Teda star could not travel to Poland for Friday\u2019s fixture in Wroclaw due to the problem, and the former Chelsea midfielder has now confirmed that he will also miss today\u2019s clash against Serbia.<\/p>\n
The 2012 UEFA Champions League winner wrote\u00a0 on his Instagram account on Monday, \u201cUnfortunately due to circumstances beyond my control I will not be on the field for our game v Serbia tomorrow (Tuesday). I am sad, and frustrated, but giving my full support to the team for another WIN!.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rohr has since invited Turkey-based midfielder Mikel Agu to replace the ageing player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serbia coach Mladena Krstajic says\u00a0 his team will have to raise their game to overcome a physical battle against Nigeria in their friendly match at The Hive Stadium\u00a0 in London on Tuesday,\u00a0 but believes they can play themselves to victory. Serbia\u00a0 lost\u00a0 2-1 to Morocco\u00a0\u00a0 in their Russia 2018 World Cup\u00a0 preparatory fixture\u00a0 at\u00a0 Stadio […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[799,797,796,92,798,705,707],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-hotsport-rs","tag-mladena-krstajic","tag-morocco","tag-nigeria","tag-robert-lewandowski","tag-serbia","tag-super-eagles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935"}],"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=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}