Is It Time for Eric Chell to Go? Nigeria v South Africa: 1 - 1

It's time to focus on the 2025 Afcon and qualification for the 2030 World Cup. Personally, I think the ship of qualifying for next year's historic mundial in the Americas has since sailed, leaving us behind to lick our wounds.

I will go out on a limb here to say Coach Chelle has done pretty well. Yes, his faults are as glaringly obvious as pimples on the face of a teenager, he does have redeeming qualities.

Raw emotions, uncontrollable rage, and the unbearable pain of, yet again, missing out on a World Cup that we have no business missing out on, aside, Chelle has kept his own side of the bargain - to an extent.

Think about it, his pattern in these qualifiers has been 1 win, 1 draw in each in each window. Now, had the people in NFF employed him when they slapped Finidi on us, we would be sitting comfortably on 14 points now, close enough to still catch South Africa, close enough to still qualify as one of the best placed 2nd positioned team. If we had started the entire campaign with Chelle, based on this model, we would be 16 points now.

This model will be no consolation to many fans who will point to Chelle's dodgy formation, porous tactics, abysmal team selection and abject in-game management (particularly in the dying embers of games), as enough justification to feed the Malian tactician to the wolves of the Serengeti. And, honestly, I won't blame these fans.

But who do I blame? Our good old administrators at the NFF; oh yes indeed!

It's become a tired trope, always pointing the fingers of blame at the NFF, whereas so many other factors contribute to this predicament - again, another line of argument that I am in full alignment.

However, 2 things can be true at the same time.

It is no secret; Eguavoen, acting on behalf of the NFF, came out to say he mandated Jose Peseiro to "play in a way that will make the Super Eagles score many goals". Due to this interference, Peseiro could only muster 2 points for the first 2 World Cup qualifiers, setting us back in a manner we were never able to recover from.

As if our situation wasn't dire enough, somebody employed a wet-behind-the-ears coaching virgin of international football to rescue the sinking ship! An aeroplane is about to crash, and you send a Danfo driver to recover the situation! Great move NFF, great move! We all saw how that turned out.

Now they brought in Chelle, who has zero experience of turning a bad situation around, to come and turn this bad situation around; are you f**king kidding me?

Thank you, NFF, thank you very much!

Anyways, yesterday's match was physical, brutal, and chaotic as neither team wanted to lose. Clearly, South Africa carved out the neatest, most clear-cut scoring opportunities, but all of our defence line held firm, all but one, Mr Ekong himself.

Why Chelle will bow to whatever pressure to start Ekong in such an encounter will forever be beyond me. For me, the brightest area in our game yesterday was the defence, heck, the only goal we scored was from a centre defender. Osayi-Samuel and Fredricks, particularly, were run ragged, yet they held firm. Bassey will be caught off guard but his recovery rate was from another planet!

The midfield collapsed after Ndidi's departure. Arokodare caused S/A a lot of problems, Dessers was clueless as a lone centre forward, Simon's tried and tired tricks failed to impress, Bashiru must be highly commended for the cross for the goal, Iwobi was so-so, Lookman looked slightly lost at times, and Nwabili played it safe and was alert.

Chukwueze was effectively curtailed, Uche huffed, puffed and scuffed a shot embarrinsingly while Chelle's substitions and directions from the last 25 minutes showed a coach out of his depths, out of ideas, out of rope, and in the eyes of many Super Eagles fans, totally out of time - he should go (but who will replace him is my question)

For me, he should stay.