Chelsea centre back Kenneth Omeruo joined the Super Eagles’ rejigged back line and rolled back the years with a fantastic performance as Nigeria defeated Iceland 2-0.
AFCON 2013 winner, Member of the Order of the Niger (MON) and one of Nigeria’s best players at the 2014 World Cup, Omeruo has had to be a patient back up to the famous Oyibo Wall but he has always believed in his ability “I know what I can do at the national team level” he always maintained before the tournament started here in Russia.
Speaking inside the Volgograd Arena, Omeruo praised the Gernot Rohr led coaching crew “We had worked really hard on how we expected Iceland to play, we watched loads of their clips and spoke clearly on what our roles were going to be especially at set-pieces. We are happy it worked out very well in the end”.
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Victor Moses had, perhaps predictably, provided Ahmed Musa with the assist for the first goal, it was Omeruo who set up his fellow AFCON ’13 winner for the second goal. Was he aware of this his ‘Assist’? Cue laughter from the big centre back.
“To be honest I was not even aware. I just hit the ball in behind the defenders into the area I know Ahmed (Musa) likes to run into and thankfully he did the rest”.
That second half start? Again, praise for Rohr “the coach pushed us. He told us that we needed to push more, to be more aggressive in going forward and for us to win more of our individual duels and take the game to them. I believe that was what got us the victory today”.
