EXTRA TIME: Nigeria reacts to Super Eagles picking up Afcon 2019 bronze
- by Grant Boone
- in Sports
- — Jul 18, 2019
It will be a battle of Eagles tonight at the Al Salam Stadium in Cairo as Nigeria's Super Eagles tussle with the Carthage Eagles of Tunisia in the third place match of the 32nd Africa Cup of Nations finals.
Nigeria defeated Tunisia by a lone goal in the third place match on Wednesday.
Ighalo, the tournament's top scorer with five goals, tapped in after keeper Moez Ben Cherifia deflected the ball off his own defender Yassine Meriah.
Shortly after the hour mark, the Super Eagles nearly doubled their lead with a well-worked short corner that was played in to the feet of Chukwueze on the edge of the box, whose curling left-footed effort looked destined for the top right-hand corner but it was brilliantly turned around the post by Ben Cherifia.
"The Eagles have a very good set of players but Rohr did a wrong substitution and the tactics for the game were faulty".
Nigeria have been entertaining to watch in the latter stages of this competition, beating Cameroon 3-2 and South Africa 2-1 to reach the last four.
It proved a costly blunder for Tunisia, who lost Sunday's semifinal in extra time to Senegal in similar circumstances.
"The match confirms what I said about them making progress".
"He is a good coach and we want him to remain with us".
"Mikel Obi still remains the captain of the team and we must remember that he was in the starting line up in two matches before he got injured and two days ago he overcame his knee injury meaning that he is not fully fit to play the match at hand".
Nigeria were awarded a 2-0 victory in Ghana and have now won six other playoffs, including three in a row between 2002 and 2006.
"We have to work much more". - Tunisia's midfielder Youssef Msakni is the only player involved in at least one goal in each of the last six AFCON editions.
Ighalo is credited to have score 79% of Nigeria's goals at the 2019 AFCON.
