Nigerian fans are worried about how the Super Eagles will cope in Saturday’s Africa Cup of Nations third place match without in-form centre back, Calvin Bassey, who is ruled out of the game in Casablanca, Morocco due to accumulated yellow cards.
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Sports247 reports that many Nigerians believe the yellow card shown the Fulham of England defender after 33 minutes of Wednesday’s semi-final loss to hosts Morocco was uncalled for and part of bad officiating on the night.
However, the booking stands and consequently rules Bassey out of Saturday’s fixture, thereby denying Nigeria the former Charlton Athletic and Leicester City of England stopper’s presence.
The Eagles struggled against Morocco in the absence of their captain, Wilfred Onyinyen Ndidi, who missed the semi-final due to his own share of accumulated cards, and Nigerians are worried that the squad will suffer a similar fate without Bassey.
This follows high marks that Bassey gained in the statistics for Wednesday’s game and the former left-wing-back, who also previously played for Ajax of Netherlands and Glasgow Rangers of Scotland, was included in the AFCON 2025 semi-finals’ all-stars best 11.
His overall ratings were 8.1 points, after he won one out of two aerial duels contested, took six out of nine ground tackles, made a total of 11 clearances and was not once successfully dribbled past in 120 minutes of Wednesday’s game.
He also emerged as the Eagles’ highest rated player versus The Atlas Lions, such that anxiety is already emerging that the team will miss his tackles, confidence, recovery and calm manner of launching Nigeria’s attacks from the back.
Worries regarding Bassey’s ineligibility heightened when the Eagles landed in Casablanca on Thursday afternoon ahead of the clash with Egypt, for which they will be without the lad who helped them absorb Morocco’s pressure for more than 120 minutes.
Sports247 gathered further that, on arrival at their new base, Bassey joined the squad in their recovery session at 6.30pm, which was open to the media, but the team’s training session on Friday was behind closed doors.
The Super Eagles and Pharaohs will clash at Mohammed V Stadium on Saturday, starting at 5pm Nigeria time, with an obvious absentee set to be Bassey (The Beast), whose original surname was Ughelumba.
However, the dark-skinned stopper, who is registered officially as Calvin Chinedu Bassey, took up his mother’s maiden name to honour her for raising him and his siblings after his father left them when he was just six years old.
