Nigeria’s U-23 Eagles invitees, Taiwo Awoniyi and Bonaventure Dennis have departed the Brussels airport in Belgium on Monday for Tunis today ahead of Wednesday’s U-23 AFCON qualifier against Libya at the Bengerdan Stadium, report Completesports.com.
The pair are among the 11 overseas-based players invited for the 2019 U-23 AFCON qualifying game.
Awoniyi has been in rich vein of form for Royal Excel Mouscron in the Belgian First Division scoring seven goals in nine league appearances while Dennis has scored five times for Club Brugge in 24 games.
“They (Awoniyi and Dennis) just departed for Tunis from Brussels,” a top source revealed to Completesports.com.
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Meanwhile, other overseas-based professionals for the match are expected to arrive in Tunis later today.
Turkey-based Azubuike Okechukwu, FC Porto’s Kelechi Nwakali, Villarreal’s Samuel Chukwueze and Spezia forward David Okereke are some of the overseas-based players expected in camp on Monday.
The U-23 Eagles are the defending champions of the U-23 Africa Cup of Nations.
Africa’s flag-bearers in the Men’s Olympic Football Tournament of Tokyo 2020 will emerge during the 3rd U-23 AFCON to hold in Egypt in November this year.
By Johnny Edward
3 Comments
Killer squad, this guys will spell Libya in Tunisia, good luck to the boys.
Names don’t win matches bruh rather team does.I expect a win though not a massacre as they barely have time to train for this qualifier.
The midfield duo of Nwakali and Zubby will be massive in deciding how the game goes.They are good in all departments with former youth world cup winners John Lazarus and Anumudu both of lobi stars protecting the goalkeeper and not forgetting Ebube Duru also of Lobi stars manning the left back so we have a right and left back and a central defender from the same team in the squad and Joshua of MFM completing the make up on the back line so we have an all home based defence that have trained together for one month and an all Europe based mercenaries in midfied and attack training for just a couple of days so lets see how this pans out.
Meanwhile,In the attack the trio of Bonaventure,Awoniyi and Okereke will be too good for the Libyans we expect them to work together despite the lack of time for proper blending hopefully the second game will be better having worked together for a few days.
However,it will be a very difficult game notwithstanding because the north Africans always pose a threat but experience will carry the day.I predict a slim win and hoping the job is done at home in Asaba next tuesday.
I expect both matches to be completely different with more home based players in the first leg and a few more foreign based in the second leg precisely because of the lack of training time.
I also expect that the first foreign based players to arrive camp will be more likely to play the first leg as they will have trained more.
First leg will probably be “low scoring” and the second leg we’ll be more composed.
Anyhow, match is in two days time, I’m already wondering how to watch it.