“Nigeria will approach next friendly with seriousness” – Flying Eagles coach Zubairu

Photo Credit – The Super Eagles & Falcons Of Nigeria.

Head coach of Nigeria’s U-20 national male team, Aliyu Zubairu has indicated that, they will approach their second friendly game with all seriousness.

The Flying Eagles produced an impressive 2-0 win against Ivory Coast’s Young Elephants in their first pre-U20 Africa Cup of Nations friendly match on Wednesday. Goals from captain Daniel Bamayi and Divine Oliseh in the second half sealed the win after a goalless first half.

This friendly match gave the technical team a perfect chance to assess the squad in preparation for the upcoming CAF U20 tournament in Cote D’Ivoire. Coach Aliyu Zubairu first spoke about the squad assessment.

“We came here for the friendly match to be able to know the level at which some of the old players that went to WAFU-B are and the new ones that want to join us.

“If any of those that went to WAFU-B can’t meet up with the standard we are looking for, he will be replaced, and so are the new ones if you can’t fit in. We still have to keep setting until we get a balanced team for the U20.”

Zubairu also highlighted his expectations for the new players set to join the team when they return to Nigeria after the friendly exercise. “We are expecting a lot of players, particularly those who have taken their careers abroad, that are eligible.

“We are expecting a reasonable number of them that will join us as soon as we go back to Nigeria. We are planning to go on a week break, so from there, when we regroup, that’s when we start expecting the foreign based players to come.”

As the Flying Eagles prepare for their second friendly match on Friday against the same side, Zubairu emphasized the importance of continued seriousness in their approach. “We are still going to approach Friday’s match with seriousness because we adopted a tactic that we try to look if It’s going to work during the AFCON proper.

“So we are going to go for another tactics to see so that we can have a plan A and B- should in case plan A fail us as a team so we can quickly switch to plan B.”

The second friendly is set to kick off at 3:30 PM Ivorian time (4:30 PM Nigeria time) at the Stade Félix Houphouët-Boigny. The 2025 AFCON U-20 kicks off on April 26 to May 18 with the four semi finalists qualifying for ghe FIFA U-20 World Cup in Chile.