Super Eagles head coach Eric Chelle says his team want to conquer the rest of the continent at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.
The West Africans made it to the final of the last edition of Africa’s biggest football competition but fell 2-1 to hosts Cote d’Ivoire.
Chelle On AFCON Target
Nigeria will head to Morocco in December with the sole aim of winning a fourth title, a task Chelle believes is achievable.
“Of course we want to win it. Personally, I want to win AFCON. My last — and first — AFCON was a fantastic experience. I think Morocco will be a great tournament, too. The players feel the same. Since March we’ve played every match under pressure,”Chelle was quoted by CAFonline.
“When we set foot in Morocco, that pressure will be familiar. We’ll be ready mentally and in our collective mindset. If we arrive on the back of play-off success, stopping us will be difficult.
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” But there are big teams: Morocco are favourites, Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire… nations in top form. Our strength is that the players have suffered, then found a way through. That can really hurt opponents.”
On Group Opponents
The Super Eagles are drawn in Group C with Tanzania, Tunisia, and Uganda.
Chelle admitted that they must be at their best to overcome the three countries.
“At AFCON there are no small teams. It’s a festival and every nation arrives with a real chance. These teams want to show their progress and their footballing vision,” added Chelle.
“Given our history, our quality of play and the calibre of past and present players, we must deliver a great AFCON. It’s a tough group: Tunisia have had an excellent year; Uganda are improving fast under Paul Put; Tanzania’s domestic league is competitive. We’ll have to be very serious and trust our mindset.”
Chelle’s side will begin their campaign against the Taifa Stars of Tanzania in Fez on Tuesday, December 23.
By Adeboye Amosu
4 Comments
I am currently watching the highlights of matches of the ongoing FIFA under 17 world cup (male) that NFF and Manu Garba conspired twice to deny us from attending it (this year and next year too).
It’s a big shame that we will not make a global appearance until at least the 2027 edition if we qualify again from ordinary WAFU B next year sha.
48 teams. 10 from Africa. See several comical results just from the first matches across the 12 groups.
Chelle, I know many players are out either injured or suspended or out of form (Nwabali in mind) but pick new, fit players that must win the playoffs this month.
Mouth watering comical results from next year’s world cup will abound and records are records.
Damn NFF even if they’ll get the credit for qualifying in spite of their insipid decisions over the years.
Records are definitely going to be broken in 2027 on all fronts because several minnows will be shellacked and who says we can’t create our own little pieces of national records.
Do your best to grace the Concacaf world cup, sir. If the results I currently see at the u17 world cup in Qatar are anything to go by (NFF with illpreparation caused us both current and next year edition tickets), next year for the senior teams will be mind-blowing.
Indeed, the more the merrier.
God’s speed, Chelle. If you let NFF bungle your list with weird call-ups and your team flops (which God will not forbid because apart from appearing in 2010 world cup as hosts, South Africa last qualified for the FIFA world cup in 2002 but they qualified at our expense with an eternal shame on us by forfeiting one match or a game to spare), the joke will be on you but somehow, it’ll be quicker route to disbanding NFF very fast.
If you succeed, it means an extension of their mediocre rule on our football. I can only imagine the words from the head of the technical department if all goes at planned when we know they ruined all our football cadet teams this year.
I read, not surprising, one of the failed coaches of our cadet teams got a princely $100m car from a player’s agent to put their name in the team’s lineup.
That’s how corrupt NFF and their local, perpetually poorly educated coaches bastardized our football.
It’s good we get to see Aduku and the falconets gun for wafu B cup this week. Let me see if he’s “joined” them.
Is naira oh…not dollars…lol. But serious, if you receive 100M naira from an agent knowing fully well that only God knows when NFF will pay ur salary, won’t you the player?
Hehehe. Don’t mind my phone keyboard where # and $ are side by side. 100m car sha for a local coach will be highly suspicious unless it’s sold and money transferred.
I no go take car oh. Where I wan drive am go? Camp? Club? Glasshouse? Everybody go suspect me.
Seriously though, they are not thinking of leaving a legacy of being the people that discovered our future stars if they are that corrupt in dropping in form players for bribe inspired, half baked players.
Check the teams this year.
Under 17 eaglets and flamingos, zero
Under 20 flying eagles, -3.2.
No outstanding players. That means, no “future” eagles or falcons from 2025 set.
Let’s see the falconets later in the week.
I feel you. It’s unfortunate, especially with our U17 boys. That’s the grade that normally produces our future stars. The blame rests solely on NFF that keeps doing the same thing and hoping for different results. Thank God we have academies that ship players to Europe once in a while, if not we’d have been doomed. We don’t even have a reliable home based team or league.