‘We’ve All It Takes To Go All The Way’
Flying Eagles Coach, Manu Garba, has declared that his team will make history by becoming the first Nigerian team to win the FIFA U-20 World Cup in New Zealand.
The Flying Eagles have been finalists at the 1989 and 2005 tournaments and have qualified for this competition without a break for the past 10 years.
The African champions will begin their campaign in New Zealand this night, when they take on five-time champions, Brazil, at the 11,000-capacity Stadium Taranaki in New Plymouth. Kick-off time is 1.00pm local time, which is 2.00am Nigerian time on Monday. The Flying Eagles won the African Youth Championship in Senegal in March. Now, they go for the FIFA U-20 trophy.
“It is either the Cup or nothing else for Nigeria,” declared Manu, who led the country to win a record fourth FIFA U-17 World Cup two years ago and he is back in New Zealand with half of that championship-winning squad.
“There is a lot of pressure, but we do not allow it to affect us because once you put yourself under pressure, you are most likely to make a lot of mistakes.
“For us, we do not know the word pressure. We do our best and just pray for mother luck. We have all it takes to go all the way and take the Cup back to Nigeria,” Manu said.
The Flying Eagles trained at the smart Stadium Taranaki yesterday afternoon, for an hour, and will have their final training before the Brazil showdown this morning by 10.00am local time.
According to thenff.com, over 6,000 tickets have been sold for this clash between Nigeria and Brazil. Hundreds of school children watched the Flying Eagles’ training session yesterday and later got autographs from the African champions.
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2 Comments
Why is everybody talking too much? Are we the only team in the competition? Now Mali has won and Nigeria has lost the first match, and that is a bad start! Work quietly and produce element of surprise.
Granted the Brazilian were kind of rough, our boys should have expected the aggressiveness – they seemed dazed by the mix of roughness and skill displayed by the brazilians – they definitely played to their plans and we were just playing catch up.
To Nigerian Coach: All we are saying, give us Alampasu as the no.1 goal keeper, going forward. Granted the defence was jittery and conceded simple mistakes, last 2 goals were the keepers fault – he somehow was spectating as opposed to focused analysis & dynamic placement for saves…Give us Alampasu please!!! The third goal was too far out not to have been saved, it showed that the Brazilians player saw that he was distracted and the 4th goal was extremely embarrassing to watch, the goalkeeper was simply out of his league ..and the defence need to be tightened – lots of work to do, if Flying Eagles is to fly at this competition. Having said that, I am rooting for Flying Eagles to go all the way, as I believe they’d bounce back – now they have nothing to loose and everything to gain. I expect the coach to use the same approach it used for the U17 worldcup, but he needs Alampasu in goal, if he has any form close to what he had at the U17 level
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