12th Africa Games: Flying Eagles bow to Burkina Faso 0:2

Nigeria’s campaign in the men’s football event of the 12^th African Games, has ended with Burkina Fasso trashing Flying Eagles 2:0 on Friday.

The games is being hosted in the Moroccan capital of Rabat, Morocco.

The group game between the two had ended one goal apiece, but Burkina Fasso proved a better at the end of hostilities in the final.

The team couched by Paul Aigbogun arrived the final with full expectations from Nigerians home and abroad, but the boys could not excel.

It was a treasured result however with the female team as it defeated her Cameroonian counterparts in the lady’s final 3-2.

The Nigerian side performed a feat at the finals, by saving three late penalties, according to reports by Goal.

This came after a goalless 120 minutes, and two misses when the game went into penalties.

Those saves made Chaimaka Nnadozie the hero of the match.

Recall that President of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation, Daniel Igali had expressed his excitement after seeing all 6 of his female wrestlers pick up 5 gold medals and one Silver..

These include Mercy Genesis 50kg – Gold, Bose Samuel 53kg – Silver, Odunayo Adekuoroye 57kg – Gold Aminat Adeniyi 62 kg – Gold, Blessing Oborududu 68kg – Gold and Blessing Onyebuchi 76kg – Gold, all picked up medals, and Igali, while speaking with brila.net thanked the coaches for their hard work as well as the ministry for prompt payment of the allowances of the athletes.

He had told Brila FM:“Well, I think I would congratulate the coaches and athletes for a marvelous job. All through in camp, they worked very hard and fully deserve this”.

“It would have been six out of six, we were just unfortunate to win silver but all in all, this is the reward for hard work and I really want to express gratitude to the coaches”.

“I won’t say we didn’t prepare at all, we needed about 3 months of training, we got in over five weeks, that was what every other team got. I won’t say we didn’t prepare at all. We always want more time to prepare”.

“I really want to give kudos to the ministry because even in camp, the athletes got what they needed. Their allowances here were paid and they are all looking to the encouragement they will give them based on the dollar promised for different medals but I wouldn’t want to complain about the preparation for this tournament”.

“Nigeria has not been in the final for the past 12 years and for me and my team, it was a great feeling we reclaimed the title.

“Thank God for the Nigeria Women’s Premier League, when you play in the NWPL, there is no amount of pressure that you see outside at this level that you won’t be able to cope with.

“I was just calm and not moved by what was happening to keep my players fully concentrated. I knew nothing was over until it’s over because I had a group of players that wanted to write their name in gold.

“Even after we missed two penalties, I was not down in the spirit as I believed God was behind us and he proved himself in the end.”

The Falconets missed at least seven key players from the 2018 U20 Women’s World Cup, including Chidinma Okeke, who is on the brink of signing for Spanish side Madrid.

Having won the African Games with 12 fresh players, Danjuma attributed the success to the huge talent in the country’s domestic league.

“The players’ performance here showed that we have a lot of talent and all we need is patience to harness them and focus our attention on developing players for the senior team,” he continued.