Nigeria’s coach Augustine Eguavoen says he took inspiration from basketball to stop Mohamed Salah on Tuesday evening. Nigeria took a 1-0 win from Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Mohamed Salah kicked off his Africa Cup of Nations campaign on Tuesday – but not in style. Egypt slumped to a 1-0 defeat against Nigeria in a game they never really got into. Salah, in particular, just couldn’t find his feet in the fixture.
And according to Nigeria coach, Augustine Eguavoen, that was thanks to some inspiration from basketball.
“Basketball is one game that I love so much,” he said after the game, per the BBC. “When you are playing against the likes of Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan and others if you don’t double-team you’ll have a problem.
“That is the same strategy that I bring into football. So when Mo Salah is with the ball, the closest person goes to him and the next person has to double-team to make him play back.
“It worked for us like 80%, but Salah broke loose one or two occasions which is normal, but again congratulations to the boys because they are so intelligent.”
Can you just double-team Mohamed Salah?
How do you stop the world’s best player? Double-team him, apparently, and force him to play the ball backwards. It works in basketball, so why wouldn’t it work here?
Eguavoen is absolutely right – double-teaming is a fantastic strategy in basketball. Elite players are able to dominate one-on-one against most defenders, meaning creating 2-v-1 situations works best for the defence. It’s a lot harder to shield the ball – or really do anything – when there are two defenders surrounding you.
It has a catch, however. If you defend an opponent with two players, that leaves someone open on the court who can have a free shot. That’s actually something Jordan used to his advantage in some massive moments in his career, making sure to find that open man – be it John Paxson or Steve Kerr – to hit a go-ahead basket in NBA Finals matchups.
This all translates over to football. It’s not quite as risky to double-team as it is in basketball but it can have very similar effects. We’ve seen that at Liverpool this season.
Teams do try to overload Salah with defenders as he, too, is almost unstoppable one-on-one. Teams who play a back three or five typically do this best – they can press the Egyptian with their wing-back and have a centre-back covering immediately.
But it still means making sure you swarm Salah with defenders as often as possible. As in basketball, however, that opens up space in other areas and Liverpool have used that to their advantage this season. The likes of Sadio Mane and Diogo Jota can thrive on that extra space, finding far more shooting opportunities for themselves.
What happened with Egypt then?
Well, they didn’t have Mane or Jota. In fact, they didn’t really have anything outside of Salah. Their entire gameplan appeared to be hoping their captain did something on his own.
That’s incredibly difficult for any player, however, and Salah found himself isolated against several defenders every time he had the ball. Egypt must find a way around that by either moving the Liverpool star wider or providing him with more options up top.
Otherwise, every team will copy these Nigeria tactics. And they’ll work.
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