Nigeria suffered one of their heaviest defeat in ten years by losing 0-4 to Portugal yesterday in an international friendly game played at the Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon.
Emmanuel Dennis was the target of most Nigerians after he insisted on taking a penalty won by Bright Osayi-Samuel with scores at 0-2. Captain of the team William Troost Ekong had an argument with him over it.
Ekong was told by coach Jose Peseiro from the bench to take the spot kick but all attempts to get the ball from his former Watford teammate proved abortive. Ekong it looked like wanted Paul Onuachu to take the spot kick not even himself.
” I think we show here in the second half against a big team that we can do much better. Of course if you have a chance of bringing the scores to 1-2 and you missed a penalty that’s very sad but I am not chiding my players. My players try to do the right thing, try to fight for us”, he started of saying in his post match interview with NFFTV.
“This moment if you score 1-2 you can push for a draw but you didn’t score and after that you suffer two goals. I think we lose the balance in that moment. We have to improve, we must improve because we want to win the next AFCON”, he further stressed before absolving Dennis of any blame.
“The next time we can train him more on how to take the penalty. We need to defend our players, which player don’t miss penalty in the world? I don’t know. Any player can miss penalty. It was Dennis today, he has my protection, he rounded up saying.
