Eguavoen Upbeat Despite Defeat To Morocco

Coach of Nigeria’s U-23 Eagles, Austin Eguavoen, still has the confident that his team could play in the final game of the ongoing Olympic qualifiers in Morocco despite their 1-0 loss to the home team.

On Saturday, the Dream Team V, as the Nigerian team are fondly called, were disappointing in the opening game of the Olympic qualifying tournament and hardly troubled the host country.

“We will put this game behind us and focus on the next game against Senegal. There is every possibility that we could still meet Morocco again in the final of this championship,” said Eguavoen told MTNFootball.com after Saturday’s match.

The Nigeria coach admitted his team were below par against Morocco, which could have been caused by the early exit of defender Kingsley Udoh as a result of injury.

“We didn’t do enough and the boys started off rather nervously, but saying that we lost a player in the first three minutes and that disturbed the team,” said Eguavoen.

“That early substitution due to injury to Udoh threw us out of our stride and we seem to be chasing the game from then on.

“Our forwards were also not sharp and alert enough to get to the end of crosses.”

Nigeria will be under pressure to beat Senegal Tuesday night at the same venue after both teams lost their opening games.

Striker Daniel Uchechi promised the Dream Team will play a lot better in their subsequent games.

“We know we can play better and taking one game at a time, we will go back and look at the game and see where we went wrong and correct that for the next game,” said the England-based Uchechi.

“This game is gone now and we have to look forward to the next match.”

Morocco coach Pim Verbeek praised his team for getting off to a winning start.

“I’m pleased with the way we played and it is great to win the first match,” said the Morocco coach.

“We created many chances that should have seen us score more than the one goal we got. We should learn to put away chances we create.

“We meet Algeria next, which means it will be a tough derby. We have to be ready.”

On Tuesday, North African rivals Morocco and Algeria in the first game of the day, while it will be an all-West African clash between Nigeria and Senegal from 9.30pm Nigerian time.