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Former Super Eagles left-back Juwon Oshaniwa described Nigeria’s 3-0 defeat to Guinea-Bissau as the worst performance of the Eric Chelle era, insisting the scale of the collapse makes it impossible to blame any single player.
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The Super Eagles suffered a damaging setback in their 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying campaign on Tuesday when goals from Franculino Djú, Mama Baldé and Álvaro Djaló gave Guinea-Bissau a comprehensive victory at the Estadio 24 de Septiembre.
For Oshaniwa, who had warned before the first qualifying match against Madagascar that Nigeria had to take every opponent seriously, the manner of Tuesday’s defeat was especially disturbing.
“This is the worst performance I’ve seen from the team since Eric Chelle became coach,” Oshaniwa said.
The 2013 AFCON winner struggled to recall a recent Super Eagles performance that compared to what happened in Bissau and rejected attempts to explain the result.
“I can’t even remember the last time we had an outing this bad,” he said. “There is no excuse for a performance like this.”
Nigeria fought to prevail throughout the match. Guinea-Bissau opened the scoring in the 15th minute through Djú, before Baldé doubled the lead in the second half. Then, Djaló completed the rout in added time.
Chelle himself later admitted that Guinea-Bissau showed greater aggression and personality and that Nigeria had difficulty finding solutions against the hosts.
But Oshaniwa believes the collective nature of Nigeria’s failure means criticism cannot reasonably be limited to one defender, midfielder, attacker or even a particular moment.
“You can’t point fingers at anyone after a performance like that,” he said. “The whole performance was awful.”
The result leaves Nigeria with three points from two games, while Guinea-Bissau has achieved maximum points and is clearly at the top of Group L.
For Oshaniwa, therefore, the biggest concern is not simply that Nigeria lost.
The thing is, on a night when a response was required, practically nothing in the Super Eagles’ collective performance provided an acceptable explanation for losing 3-0.
