NFF Asks Nigerians To Forgive F/Eagles

The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Vice President, Seyi Akinwunmi has appealed to Nigerian football fans to forgive the Flying Eagles for failing to reach the CAF U-20 Na­tions Cup billed for next year in Zambia.

The Emmanuel Amuneke tutored side bungled their chances of qualifying for the competition when they lost at home in Lagos to Sudan on Saturday.

The Flying Eagles won the first leg 2 – 1 in far away Omdurman, but surprisingly fell 3-4 at home in Lagos. The Su­danese went through on the away goals rule with aggregate scores standing at 5-5.

The implication for Ni­geria is that Emmanuel Amuneke and his wards that graduated from the U-17 side that conquered the world in 2015, will not have a chance to play at the Fifa U20 World Cup, since Africa’s repre­sentatives will emerge in Zambia.

Akinwunmi acknowl­edged that the loss was a painful one but was quick to implore Nigerians to understand that the team is a work in progress.

“We are very upset, not only because we lost, but because we know that we have a team that is ca­pable of doing better than this.

The talents that we have should have seen us through, but that’s foot­ball, sometimes you lose but these boys are the fu­ture of Nigerian football and we will not discard them, we will not throw them away because we lost this match, we should encourage them, to let them know that some­times we learn from ad­versity.

“I implore Nigerians to please forgive and un­derstand that it’s work in progress. They will be­come champions of the world in future. We’ve seen these boys play, ev­erybody have seen them play. What happened on Saturday was just a freak and that’s the way we see it,” Akinwunmi said.

Amuneke on his part described their exit as sad, even as he blamed the defeat to ill luck.