World Cup 2018: Nigeria confident they can tame Lionel Messi and put Argentina to the sword
'I think they haven’t found their form yet and they haven’t found Messi as well,' defender Leon Balogun said
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Your support makes all the difference.For Ahmed Musa, things seem to come in twos. At the World Cup in Brazil four years ago he struck twice against Argentina. Yesterday in Volgograd, he produced another double to revive Nigeria’s 2018 World Cup prospects against Iceland. Oh, and he found the net in his only two Leicester City appearances this last season.
The fact this last pair came in the EFL Cup and EFL Trophy respectively – the latter for the club’s Under-21s at Oldham Athletic – provides an attractive redemption angle: a player who could not get a kick at Leicester shining on the game’s greatest stage.
The only other African footballer to have scored twice in two separate World Cup matches was Cameroon’s then 38-year-old Roger Milla, both at Italia 90. Milla’s tale of returning from self-imposed exile on Reunion Island to answer a call-up demanded by his national president, Paul Biya, rather outdoes Musa’s night with the kids at Boundary Park.
Musa’s exile was rather less voluntary – and before turning his thoughts to another World Cup date with Argentina, he first tackled that old chestnut about how a player who disappoints in a domestic league can look a world-beater in the global spotlight.
“Let me ask you a question,” he began after becoming Nigeria's record finals scorer. “Did you ever see me play? Did they give me any opportunity to show myself after they sacked the coach [Claudio Ranieri, the manager who signed him in 2016]? So I don’t want to talk about that. I have to go back to the team and finally I say what … maybe I have to leave.”
Musa spent the second half of 2017/18 on loan back at CSKA Moscow, his previous club, and pointedly thanked them for their support. “They’ve given me the confidence when I came back and made me believe I can do it because it’s not that easy staying on the bench without playing for seven months,” he said.
With that confidence he scored a terrific opening goal, lashed in on the half-volley, before a cool rounding of the goalkeeper for his second. In the process he breathed life into a Nigeria side second-best in their opening game against Croatia but now second in Group D, two points above both Iceland and Argentina.
Nigeria lost all three of their previous World Cup meetings with Argentina – including a 3-2 defeat in 2014 – but did come from two goals down to beat a Lionel Messi-less Albiceleste side 4-2 in a friendly in Krasnodar last November. Defender Leon Balogun, who signed for Brighton & Hove Albion from Mainz before setting off for this World Cup, acknowledged that Argentina would be a wounded animal after their 3-0 loss to Croatia – “the Argentina fans are very unhappy so the team owes the nation” – yet argued that containing Messi in Tuesday’s St Petersburg showdown need not be a mission impossible.
“I think they haven’t found their form yet and they haven’t found Messi as well,” he said. “They’re very dependent. They always have been. Again if you look at their qualifying campaign you can see that Messi was the one who took them to the World Cup.
“We learned a lesson from the game against Croatia – to play more patiently, and be confident in ourselves,” he added of the Super Eagles’ opening 2-0 defeat by the Balkan team.
The lesson from watching Argentina’s own defeat against Croatia, meanwhile, is “you have to be very patient and definitely you need to be disciplined defensively. You have to close all the passes, or as many as possible, to Messi to leave him out of the game – but then at the same time take out the rest of their amazing qualities so it’s not going to be an easy one.”
Nigeria can help themselves with more of the high-speed counterattacks with which they hurt Iceland in the second half of Friday’s match, according to Balgoun’s fellow centre-back William Troost-Ekong. “Of course they’re deadly up front but they give away a lot of space when they play,” he said, “maybe because they play such attacking football and that’ll suit us. The same thing happened today in the second half – Iceland opened up a little bit and then we could kill them.”
And – believe it, Leicester fans – nobody looks better equipped to deliver the blow than the £16m misfit Musa.
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