Nduka Ugbade, the coach of the Golden Eaglets, has said that the Nigerian team is driven to win the U-17 Africa Cup of Nations championship for a third time, thesportsbay.com reports.
Favour Daniel’s injury-time goal gave the Eaglets a 1-0 victory over Zambia in their season opener for both teams in Constantine.
Nigeria took control of Group B at the U17 AFCON as a result, and Morocco took over after beating South Africa 2-0 in the second group match.
After winning the previous U17 AFCON championship 16 years ago, Nigeria is in Algeria in search of a third title.
After the game, Coach Ugbade told CAFonline.com that the win puts them in a good position to end the wait for a third win.
“Winning the first game gives us a mental edge and psychologically, we are better than we started.
“We created lots of chances that we couldn’t finish, some passes were not correct and many more errors. But the good thing is that we keep improving.
“Of course, we have the targets to win, but we need to go a step at a time.
“We focus on the next match and if we win we are in the quarters. We get to the quarters we win and we are in the World Cup,” he said.
Despite a positive start to the tournament in Algeria, Coach Ugbade was not happy with his team’s play in the final third.
Nigeria created a number of good chances in both halves but were unable to convert before Favour’s decisive winner late on.
Speaking further, the former Nigeria Super Eagles star rued the missed chances but promised to work on them.
“African football has really developed and all teams are strong now, especially in Youth football.
“We played a very tough game against Zambia and anyone could have won. Of course, there were some mistakes and you will definitely have many of them at this stage of development,” he added.
