Spy Out Nigeria’s Opponents for Rio Olympics Men Football Tournament

2016 summer Olympic Games Men football tournament will commence this August at Rio de Janerio Brazil. Nigeria will be playing it’s first group game against Japan on Thursday August 4 at Arena de Amazonia Maraus…

The second group game against Sweden will be on Sunday August 7… then the final group game will take place on Wednesday August 10… Nigeria Vs Colombia at Arena Corinthians Sao Paulo.

We decided to put to use our scouting skills to check out what Nigeria’s opponents will look like…

so for hours we sat back to view several videos on YouTube… Check websites like www.rio2016.org , www.wikipaedia.com , www.fifa.com …. And we read several articles about Japan, Sweden and Colombia teams. Let’s share what we found out here:

Japan Olympic Men Football Team

The Japanese team plays typical ‘Chun-chun’ style, a kind of total football that aims at running down opponent with their incredible stamina and very fast pace football.

This Japanese team is different, they possess a ‘never-say-die spirit’… and usually fight like wounded lions anytime they are loosing. Aside from this, the team have some brilliant individual players, especially at the midfield and attack line.

Road to Rio:

The Japanese team finished as Asian Champions in their all-conquering qualifying campaign in 2015. Many analysts believe that this team is far better than the Japanese team that got into the last four at London Olympics 2012.

Star Player(s)

The young forward Yuya Kubo, popularly known as the “Predator’ can easily tire apart any defense line with his ball intelligence, pace and super finishing.

Kubo scored a brace against Thailand and the all-important winning goal at the Semi-final game against Iraq… to finish as the team’s top scorer.

Kubo has racked up 19 goals in 87 appearance for his club Young Boys.

Head Coach:

Makoto Teguramori is a homegrown tactician that fully understands how to apply the Japanese style of play against a slower and less tactical opponents… He will bring his experience to bear at the Olympics.

Sweden Olympic Men Football Team

The Swedish Olympic men football team plays a well refined European ‘text book.’ Football style that seems to conceal individual display and emphases more on clinical teamwork.

The team is very tactical in their approach, in reading the game and style of their opponent... the team can easily switch from one playing formation to another and yet, to another as the game evolves.

Road to Rio

Sweden surprised the continent and the wider footballing world by winning their first UEFA U21 Championship in Czech Republic… after they defeated Italy, England and eventually Portugal at the final showdown to qualify for Rio Olympics as European Champions.

Star Player(s)

Penalty stopper Patrick Carigren, towering over the goal post, is a real stumbling block for most strikers.

After all effort, the ball seem not to find its way inside the net… as Carigren punches and parry the ball at full length dives.

Head Coach

Hakan Ericson strikes you more like a football professor with his devices and painstaking jottings on his Scrapbook, can easily twitch the game to favor his team by one or two game changing tactics from the bench.

Columbia Olympics Men Football Team

The Colombian team plays a style that emphases on ball possession, a mixture of tip-tap, ball holding and dribbling; sometimes playing much to the gallery.

Road to Rio

This present Colombian team have a lot of ball jugglers that struggled at the earlier stage, but the team improves with every other game as they went on to thrashed Brazil 3 – 0 and just runner-up to Argentina.

They went ahead to the intercontinental Play-off and prevailed over USA 1 – 2 in Texas to qualify for 2016 Rio Olympics.

Star Players

The Colombian team is like a parade of stars; Jarlan Bairera, Santos Borre, Juan Fernando Quintero and Roger Mertinez are great ball jugglers and influential to the team’s success so far.

Head Coach

Carlos Restrepo is not much of a coach to reckon with in the world; he didn’t even play the game professionally, but grew through the ranks since his early 20s.’ Usually plays a strange formation that has surprisingly brought success results for his team.