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After Nigeria’s Home-based Eagles slumped 1-0 to cup holder Senegal in their Group D opening game on Tuesday evening in Zanzibar, Head Coach, Eric Sekou Chelle, has predicted early return home for the team should the boys fail to lift their game in the next two matches in the African Nations Championship (CHAN).
Nigeria’s next two games are against Sudan and Congo which they need to win to stand the chance of progressing from the group where Senegal have maximum three points while Sudan and Congo have a point each from their draw on Tuesday evening.
But Chelle who will be occupied with the main Super Eagles duties later this month when the senior players will begin preparations for their crucial 2026 World Cup qualifiers against Rwanda and South Africa in September, warned yesterday that Eagles must sit up.
“Against Sudan and Congo, if we play like this (match against Senegal) and are scared of other teams, we will return to Nigeria quickly,” observed the Franco-Malian gaffer to the team’s media team in Zanzibar.
Although he admitted that the Teranga Lions were a good side, Nigeria must take each game as it comes.
“Senegal is a good team, and I told you that we want to take it game by game.
In the first half, we created no chance to score. You need to be more aggressive—offensively and defensively. I think we played well at times, but the reality is we made just one mistake. So, we need to improve our state of mind and be more competitive, more aggressive.
“We need to try to play football. We enjoy it when we play, create chances to score, keep the ball—but when we lose the ball for 20 minutes, they score, and this is football.
“We need to win games, we must be ambitious, and to do that, we need to be more aggressive. We lost every duel today, and we must do better.
“This is the first match, and we have two games to go. We need to change our state of mind and be more aggressive on the pitch. You can’t play football if you lose every duel in the game,” he concluded.
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