Keshi talks about Chad victory

The Big Boss was affirmative that his team started shakily but grew into the game as they won 2-0 against les Sao in Saturday’s game at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium

Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi was ecstatic about the win against Chad in Kaduna on Saturday. After the game he spoke to the media and shared his thoughts on various aspects of the game.
Here are excerpts:
On William Troost-Ekong’s defending
I don’t know if there’s anything perfect about the defense that we had today. The thing is that they played to instruction – they were very disciplined in their marking.
William is a very good player, I’ve been watching him so when the opportunity arrived to bring him in, I brought him in.
He’s a very good addition to what we have on ground. We hope we get more of that quality in other departments in the team.

What changed between the first and second halves after Chad closed down the attack?
In the first half, we didn’t know each other properly yet. This was our second game after the one against Kaduna United. There was a lot of caution among the players because nobody wanted to make mistakes, there was a lot of anxiety.
In the second half we made them relax and changed a little bit of positioning in the game and we made substitutes of Rabiu and Odion, it clicked. We hope we have more of that in the next couple of games.

Starting with three debutants and getting them to work as a team
Even if you have a team for five or six years, you will still have one or two additions and subtractions to make because you are always looking for that balance. Having two new defenders, these are players that I have studied for a long time and their quality of play. I know if we have time to work together, it would just be as if they’ve been together for a long time.
We have to do what we have to do to have a very solid team and I have confidence in this group of players there’s a lot of potential we have. We have to keep going and giving them the opportunity.

On Ogenyi Onazi’s red card
In the heat of the moment you will probably act the same. But the only fault I saw in Onazi was that he knew if you go with retaliation you’re going out.
What happened was that the [Chadian] elbowed him in his eyes and he hit back. I wouldn’t blame Onazi, I probably would do more than that. It’s just that we’re going to miss him for two or three matches because it was a straight red card.

On Rabiu Ibrahim’s creative quality
We know his quality and we’ve been watching him, he’s been playing great football for his club and that’s why he is here. We also have Michael Babatunde. The more players we have in all departments, the better for us. I welcome him, he’s a good player.

On Aaron Samuel’s substitution due to injury
Aaron has muscle tear but we hope that it is not too pronounced, by the time they finish the scan we will know how bad it is.

On Kaduna security and fans encroachment
We have not had better security than the one we have in Kaduna. The people of Kaduna have shown us great love. So whatever is said in the newspapers is not something that we need to deal with. We need to move together, it’s a great thing that we came to Kaduna to play and to see the Kaduna people. At this point, let us move and think how we can unite ourselves and make Nigeria a great country.