Nigeria stutter but steady the ship

African football in all its eccentricities captivated the crowd yet again in the Parc des Princes yesterday as Nigeria progressed into the last 16 in the World Cup.

Victor Ikpeba's goal, a thing of beauty in the 26th minute, separated the teams at the finish and left Bulgaria with the daunting task of beating Spain in their final game to preserve their interest in the championship.

In a remarkable game, the Olympic champions often looked in a different class in the opening half and yet found themselves hanging on desperately in the closing stages.

Bora Milutinovic, Nigeria's much travelled coach, will be the first to admit that it can be difficult for his team to temper natural exuberance with the cold pragmatism of football at this level.

At the summit of their performance, when the sap was still rising, the Nigerians were frequently awesome, taking the Bulgarians apart in the first half in a manner which suggested that they might score four or five.

Then the wheels came off early in the second half and the impression was of a high powered car, stricken by unexpected mechanical problems, chugging its way home, with no certainty of ever making base.

In the end, the Nigerians made it, but not before Milutinovic's blood pressure had soared and the rest of us, basking in temperatures of 80F plus, had wondered aloud how the Africans will survive against skilled practitioners like Brazil and Germany.

"Yes, we lost it a bit in the second half," said Milutinovic in one of the great understatements of the competition. "We tried to pace it better, but we let Bulgaria back into the game and gave ourselves some unnecessary problems at the finish."

In a classic confrontation between Nigeria's athleticism and the professionalism of the Bulgarians, one marvelled at times at the quality of the performances of players like Finidi, Ikpeba, Daniel Amokachi and not least, the extrovert Jay Jay Okocha.

Okocha, frequently inspirational, occasionally irritating when he tries to take too much out of the ball, projects the image of a court jester intent on entertaining. His foot was on much of what mattered in the first half, but, significantly, he was the first to wilt under the blazing sun when the Europeans changed the tempo and the tactics in the second half.

Bulgaria are often cast as the great unloved of international sport, and nobody suffered more yesterday that Hristo Stoichkov who was roundly booed every time he touched the ball. But before the end, Stoichkov had demanded the grudging admiration of the crowd by the manner in which he pointed the way back for his team.

Dropping into a much deeper role in midfield, he suddenly began to spray precise passes through the Nigerian defence, and instantly the opposition began to betray the signs of a team in panic.

Uche and Taribo West, confident almost to a fault in the opening 45 minutes, were now being turned more and more, and when the substitutes, Daniel Borimirov and Luboslav Penev, began to breach the outer ring of defence, the Nigerian goal area became a mine field.

Cruelly, Stoichkov missed a great chance when he failed to deflect Emil Kostadinov's miss-hit cross/shot on to the target in the 67th minute. Then, at the end of the second best move of the game, Kostadinov was denied by the crossbar.

Fittingly, it was the game's most fluent exchange of passes which produced the decisive goal. Celestine Babayaro and Okocha combined to establish the initial opening, Amokachi's adroit flick gave it still more vision and then Ikpeba stepped past Trifon Ivanov's tackle to apply the textbook finish.

It was a goal which fitted the elaborate stage, but, at different stages, Ikpeba, Amokachi and Finidi missed golden chances to add to it.

Thus reprieved, Bulgaria gradually began to trace some exciting patterns, devised initially by Stoichkov but later involving Krassimir Balakov and Borimirov.

To the immense pleasure of the crowd, Nigeria dug in to hold their lines in the last 10 minutes when pockets of danger surfaced at regular intervals in their penalty area. And overall, that was perhaps no more than they deserved.

Ikpeba underlining how much African football has progressed: "Everything was a bit tense within the squad before the Spain game. But we've done very well against Spain and today against Bulgaria - that shows how much African football has improved.

"I was delighted I scored my first goal in the World Cup, but it was a team effort, so credit must go to the whole team. We really deserved to qualify. It was a tough match - both matches have been tough - but we've been able to win both. "We can't play against France now, which is just as well because they're a difficult team to beat and have already scored seven goals in two games. We'll just have to wait to see who our opponents will be."

No report of a game here is complete without reference to the standard of the refereeing. At times, the Chilean official, Mario Sanchez, allowed the crowd do his job for him. But on the credit side, he kept his red card in his pocket. And after the drama of the previous day, that was a mild relief.