Rio Olympics: Five Things We Learnt From Nigeria's Victory Over Sweden

The Nigerian U23 National Team have progressed through to the final eight of the men's football event at the ongoing Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil following their 1-0 narrow victory over Sweden in their second group game on Sunday night.

The Sia One-led boys, who were subjected to ridicule defiled all predictions as they got to Brazil few

hours before their first game and whipped Japan 5-4, despite flying for over five hours.

The African U23 champions, who are probably just acclamatising to the whether, food and all others in the South American country and stamped their authority as the leader of the group with their second victory, and will be needing just one point st least, to remain the group leaders as they head into the semis, but that as it may, here are few things we noticed in the second game against Sweden.

• The Four-goals hero in the first game, oghenekaro Etebo, failed to find the back of the net because coach Samson Siasia played him out of position. In the first game, Etebo played right behind the striker, thereby having direct access to all the rebounds that gave him some part of the goals he scored in the first game.

• That Captain John Mike Obi struggled  to catch up with the pace of the rest of the team, but not taking away the experience he brought to the table.

• Another thing we noticed was that Mikel was played in the attacking role instead of his defending duty back at Chelsea.

• We discovered that, unlike the first game, Nigeria's defence was a little more coordinated, with William Troost-Ekong and Sinsere Seth controlling the central defence while Amuzie found more time to overlap. He must however be cautioned as his return to his position is a little delayed. 

• We also discovered that Siasia's doesn't have depth in his bench that if any of his players got injures, there won't be a perfect replacement for such player.