Golden Eaglets coach, Emmanuel Amuneke,
has described Sunday’s draw of the 11th African U-17 Championship Niger
2015, which pitted Nigeria against Niger, Guinea and Zambia in Group A,
as a fair deal.
He said Nigeria would be focussed on securing a ticket to the 2015 FIFA World Cup in Chile.
“I think it is a fair grouping, not minding the fact that we are going to face the host country, Niger,” Amuneke said.
“We are not going to underrate any of the
teams and as I said before the draw, our sole objective in Niger would
be to qualify for the World Cup and after that, we can begin to talk
about other things.”
Golden Eaglets will have their work cut
out since they are going to battle against the hosts whom their
predecessors whitewashed 10-1 on aggregate in the qualifiers for Morocco
2013. They finished second and secured a ticket to the FIFA World Cup
in the UAE and eventually earned Nigeria a record fourth title.
“We
are aware of the task ahead of us and what happened between the Golden
Eaglets and Niger the last time is immaterial now,” Amuneke said.
“Our boys have to go out there and show
that this set of Golden Eaglets is good in their own right and we must
first secure a ticket to the World Cup.”
Though Zambia and Guinea are making a
return to the competition since they failed to qualify the last time in
Morocco, Amuneke said they would not be taken lightly.
“Both Zambia and Guinea showed they were strong sides during the qualifiers, so we are going to take all our matches seriously.”
In the other half of the draw, defending
champions, Cote d’Ivoire would slug it out in Group B with the trio of
South Africa, Mali and Cameroon who incidentally were not in Morocco
2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment