… Bronze better than nothing – Sunday Dare..
Eniola Olatunji reporting.
CAFTotalEnergyAfricanYouthChampionshipEgypt2023.
Nigeria on Friday at the Cairo International Stadium bagged her 5th Bronze medal of the CAF U20 African Youth Championship humiliating the Young Carthage ions of Tunisia 4-0 in the 3rd place encounter.
It was the second loss of Tunisia at that stage, back to back, to a West African country having lost the last edition 3rd place match to the Baby Scorpions of Gambia at Mauritius in 2021. Unfortunately, West African countries had scored 8 vital goals against Tunisia at the Tournament in Egypt. First Gambia beat them by a lone goal at the group stage; Senegal slammed them 3-0 at the semis and now Nigeria whipped them 4-0 at the losers’ final.
Nigeria now has 7 Gold; 2 Silver and 5 Bronze Medals to her name making the country great on the continent. Tunisia’s greatest achievement in this category remains the Silver won in 1985.
Ibrahim Muhammad opened scoring for Nigeria in the 9th minute through a Bameyi assist before the players retired to the locker room.
Hardly had the whistle been blown for resumption of the second half, less than a minute that Ahmed Abdullahi pounced on a defensive blunder for goal number 2 for Nigeria. Abdullahi had missed the penalty against Gambia in the 85th of the semifinal against Gambia which Nigeria lost by a lone goal. It was his only goal of the tournament.
Nigeria struck again through another defensive blunder, from Jude Sunday who got the first brace for Nigeria. A brace is when a payer scores two goals in a single match. Sunday got his second goal from a blaster inside the box off Adeniran lawal who gave him the assist the other time this time in the 90th minute. The Tunisians looked like stranded passengers who missed their fight when the 4th goal was scored.
Centre Referee, Mohammed Athomuni from Comoro Island was as strict as the Pope in maintaining order warning players severally that he would not take nonsense from anybody; indicating he would stop the clock to avoid time wasting tactics of players and ordering that players be taken off field for treatment instead of the breech of on field treatment. When the Tunisians milled around him at half time for their usual protests and intimidation of Referees, Athomuni ordered them to back off and when he was reaching for his Yellow cards, the players withdrew shaking their heads over a possible infringement of penalty from Solomon Agabalaka.
Athomuni had made 14-8 foul calls on Nigeria and flashed the only Yellow Card to Ahmed Abdullahi. Nigeria were flagged offside 5-1 times showing the country did campaign after election looking for goals glory when it was late.
Jubril Othman the two goal hero of Tunisia was rendered a mere passenger on the field.
Nigeria’s Sports Minister, Chief Sunday Dare hailed the Flying Eagles saying a Bronze medal is better than nothing.
Nigeria and Tunisia along with Senegal and Gambia will represent Africa at the world U20 championship in Indonesia in May this year.
Tomorrow Saturday at 1600 Nigerian time the Cub Lions of Senegal will meet to determine African Champions Senegal missed lifting the trophy a good three times in 2015; 2017 and 2019 winning Silver whereas Gambia has never been in the finals before but won the 3rd place matches twice in 2017 and 2021.
