Former African Footballer of The Year, Victor Nosa Ikpeba has come out with a stern declaration that the current Nigerian national team needs two great goalkeepers and stiffer competition for shirts in all positions of the squad.
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Sports247 reports that Ikpeba gave the verdict while providing a review of the Super Eagles’ form at the recent Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, where they placed third for the ninth time in history.
‘The Prince of Monaco’ gave kudos to the team’s coach, Eric Sekou Chelle, for making the squad tactically better than they were during the World Cup qualifiers, but noted that he did not crack Morocco’s technical depths in the semi-final.
Ikpeba, who played for AS Monaco of France and Borussia Dortmund of Germany at the height of his career, added: “Let’s give credit to the manager. He had enough time to train the boys and interact with them.
“He had more training sessions to tweak the team and ensure that they avoided what happened during the World Cup qualifiers.
“They started very well and scored a lot of goals in the competition. It was beautiful and lovely. The only problem was that they couldn’t cope with the challenge of Morocco.
“We were taught some tactical lessons in that game. It could have gone either way when it came to penalty kicks, and we couldn’t get to the final.”
Ikpeba, who is now a regular analyst on a popular cable television channel, concluded by urging Chelle and his players, as well as officials of Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to learn from the lapses seen at AFCON 2025, in order to do better in subsequent outings for the national team.
“We’ve learnt from that, and we must now make progress. What we now need for this team is a little bit of competition in the squad; which would put all the players on their toes.
“For instance, we need two great goalkeepers for the Super Eagles. We need stiff competition between two great keepers, as we used to have in the past,” Ikpeba stressed.
