Nigeria secured a place in the semi-final of the African Nations Championship after beating Morocco 4-3 after extra-time in the quarter-final match played at the Cape Town Stadium.
Super Eagles Chief Coach, Stephen Keshi, on Saturday January 25th 2014 said he did not panic when his team was down 0-3 against Morocco in a quarter-final encounter.
The captain and goalkeeper, Chigozie Agbim, said that that, in spite the uphill task ahead of the team, he was calm.
In a post-match conference, Keshi told newsmen that he charged his players to show the stuff they were made of in the second half of the pulsating encounter.
He said:
I told them that in the second half I will want to see a different character, the type of character we brought against Bafana Bafana.
So, they took on from there, and for now, we are not going home.
There was one thing going for us, and we capitalised on it; we knew the Moroccans were good when they were with the ball, and poor when they were not with the ball.
We began to use our strength to exploit the weakness of the Moroccans, and inflicted whatever damage we could inflict on them.
That was how the match was won.
Agbim, the Super Eagles captain and goalkeeper, thanked Nigerians for their support saying God helped them win.
He said: “I told my teammates at halftime that we were not playing our usual game, and that we needed to step up our game to stand a chance of winning the match. At the resumption of the second half, we played differently, and God helped us to win the match. I want to thank all Nigerians for their support for the team.”
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Super Eagles literally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the Cape Town Stadium.
The Atlas Lions of Morocco stunned the Eagles in the 36th, 39th and 41st minutes in a match that could be described as one with two halves.
“The Eagles had to reduce the scores and eventually scored the equalising goal at the 90th minute.
The goal resulted from the mercurial display of Ejike Uzoenyi and Abubakar Ibrahim of Nasarawa United FC in the 110th minute of the match.
