Home-based Eagles Looses out

A lost penalty in the 26th minute of the first half was the highpoint of Nigeria’s dismal run in the African Nations Championship qualifier against Niger Republic, as the home-based Eagles went crashing out of the competition with a goalless draw in Kano.

Beijing 2008 Olympics silver medalist, Chibuzor Okonkwo was the culprit on the penalty, but Kano-based sports journalist, Mike Obuh said in an interview with brilafm.net that the Nigerian players gave their very best, but poor tactical display and faulty substitutions let them down.

A substitute appearance by another promising star, John Owoeri, who was part of the Holland 2005 World Youth Championship silver-winning team, and hastily drafted Nigerian Premier League current top scorer, Ahmed Musa could not save the day for Coach Daniel Amokachi’s side.

Nigeria are regarded as one of the powerhouses of African football but are yet to feature in the CHAN, a biennial tournament for players from the domestic leagues of their countries and which kicked off in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, last year.

Perennial rivals Ghana stopped Nigeria in the qualifiers for the inaugural championship and went on to reach the grand finale where they lost to DR Congo.

The summary of Sunday's match at Sani Abacha Stadium, Kano was simply that, for the second edition runing, Nigeria's local players had failed to qualify for the novel championship set aside by CAF for players plying their trade in the domestic leagues of their respective countries.

Sunday, 28 March 2010 19:08 Written by BrilaFM

The problem with our leaders manifest in every sphere o our national life albeit politically, socially, culturally, spiritually and otherwise.We have a knack for recycling the same people who failed abysmally in their fields of responsibilities to superintend over the same failed project over and over again.RECYCLING!-THE MENACE OF OUR COUNTRY.This same Amokachie who was saddled with the responsibilty of coaching the National Home based Eagles have never suceeded with any National team that he has had to overseer.For each failure he is rewarded with more national appointments.The National team has been a way of rehabilitating him and putting food on his table and not national assignment based on meritocracy .If i may borrow the words of the late Sunday Afolabi , every national appointment in Nigeria is an "invitation to come and eat".We pray gor Coach Lagerback and the ever optimistic and soccer loving Nigerians for a good outing in South Africa with such recycled political appointees like Amokachie as assistants of our national team.