Mexico v Nigeria: Peseiro's double tactical blunder against El Tri highlighted

The Super Eagles were beaten by World Cup-bound Mexico at the AT&T Stadium in Texas on Sunday morning.

It was Portuguese manager Jose Peseiro's first game as head coach of the Nigerian national team.

A goal from Santiago Gimenez gave Mexico the lead early in the first half, but Feyenoord striker and Europa Conference League top scorer Cyriel Dessers equalized in the 54th minute before an own goal from Troost-Ekong earned El Tri a win.

While there is the case of injuries and absentees in the Nigerian squad, Peseiro made a double tactical blunder which will be analysed below by allnigeriasoccer.com.

The Super Eagles started with a 5-3-2/5-4-1 formation with the players lining up like this.

GK: Francis Uzoho
WB: Moses Simon, Calvin Bassey
CB: Semi Ajayi, Troost-Ekong, Chidozie Awaziem
MF: Innocent Bonke, Alex Iwobi, Joe Aribo
FW: Cyriel Dessers, Terem Moffi

Moffi was tasked with moving up to Dessers to initiate a press whilst dropping deep into the midfield out of possession to compress space thus executing the hybrid.

The first major blunder of this tactical set-up was that the half-spaces as the spaces between the centre-backs and full-backs/wing-backs were left exposed.

For too much of the time, Mexico were able to exploit this gift from Peseiro's tactical blunder to send in dangerous crosses, one of which Ekong scored an own goal from.

On the first goal, Alex Iwobi failed to engage the Mexican ball-carrier who was coming from a half-space position.

He sent in a deep cross towards the left winger. Simon also failed to protect his half-space and the ball was headed across for Gimenez to score.

Bassey had a good game in an attacking capacity but on the defensive side he was positionally bad.

The Rangers star  failed to communicate effectively with his left-sided defender Awaziem and the half-space was left vacated many times.

So many dangerous crosses that needed last-ditch blocks were delivered from this side.

Peseiro's second blunder was to revert the team from a mid-block into a low-block.

The Super Eagles didn't make tackles from midfield and dallied until the ball got into dangerous zones before they engaged.

This gave too much territorial powers to Mexico who controlled every facet of play.

By the time the plan was abandoned by the Portuguese coach, the damage had been done.

The fans would be hoping errors like these are eradicated by the time the second friendly game against Ecuador comes around.

Sofolowu Mayowa

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