Golden Eaglets head coach Nduka Ugbade has said his players gave their all and does not fault them following their 2-1 defeat to Burkina Faso in the quarter-final fixture of the 2023 Africa U-17 Cup of Nations.
Nigeria’s hope of a third title and qualification to the FIFA World Cup was thwarted following the defeat, and Ugbade has now been left to pick the pieces of their broken hearts.
“The players are disappointed of course because they are young but we must support them because they need to continue their careers. We should work on their development because I believe that some of these players will eventually move to the senior national team,” the tactician said after the defeat to Burkina Faso.
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He adds; “I am happy with the performance of our players and in such competitions, even if you lose, you gain something by developing the players for the future.”
Looking back at the defeat to Burkina Faso, Ugbade says they would have had a different result were they more clinical infront of goal.
“Everything worked as we had planned, but we could not score with the chances we had. We paid dearly for that. We learn the lessons and move on,” he said.
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COMMENTS
Just keep quiet. I am not interested in what you have to say.
This idiot call coach was warned to select right boys to play Burkina Faso but did otherwise.
I regret supporting this team.
I thought they were our best national team but when I watched their game against Zambia and Morocco, I knew they won’t go far at all. Clueless attack, nonexistent creative midfielders and inept defences were the bane of their failure.
Inefficient short passes were only things that make them dominant against other teams, the rate at which they missed golden scoring opportunities were grossly alarming. I am perturbed, what happened to the team that represented us in WAFU ZONE B, I am not sure it is the same team.
Ugbade really messed us up big time on this one, seeing the team making the same tactical errors in all the four matches without creative initiatives from the bench. This put laudable question marks on Ugbade’s coaching tactics. There was no landslide input from the bench to salvage.
What really happened with the team at WAFU and AFCONU17? This question begs for more questions than answer to us as the team’s fan.
Majority of the defenders/midfielders at WAFU-B failed MRI which is why they were unavailable for the AFCON.
The individual future of those Eaglets is in tatters. Had they gone to the World Cup many could have signed for European clubs.
State of the Nation!
Ugbade assembled a bunch of talented players from goalkeeping to the attack but tactical deficiencies from the bench were his Achilles heels. In all the games played, the boys showed uncommon tenacity, hunger,zeal and determination but were technically deficient in the final third.
In the early minutes of the game against the young Stallions, the Eaglets were the better side,with ball movement, their crisp passes and drive however, the failure of the strikers to convert their golden opportunities in the early minutes of the game allowed their opponent to reinvent themselves and punished Nigeria in a counterattack which led to the first goal in the dead.
The team’s technical ineptness from the bench came to the fore in the games against Morocco and Burkina Faso where the oppositions’ defence and goalkeeping ward off our boys’ attack.