Nigeria’s Supersand Eagles opened their campaign at the 2019 Beach Soccer World Cup with a defeat to Portugal on Friday night in Asuncion, Paraguay.
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The Supersand Eagles lost 10 – 1 to the World no. 3 despite scoring the first goal of the encounter. Goalkeeper Danjuma Paul made numerous outstanding and excellent saves to keep Nigeria in the game in the first period before centurion, Abu Azeez gave Nigeria the lead with seconds to go in the first period.
It ended 1-0 in favor of the Supersand Eagles in the first period. Portugal however wasted no time getting into their groove in the second period as it eventually turned out to be a rout.
45 seconds after the restart, Belchior scored with a clever corner kick to level the score before world player of the year Jordan Santos gave Portugal the lead Fort he first time in the game with a well struck freekick.
Nigeria struggled to contain their opponents from them on, eventually losing by nine goals at the end of the third period.
Speaking after the game, Nigerian Legend Abu Azeez highlighted loss of concentration as the major issue the team had to deal with adding that they will work on their mistakes in subsequent games.
“We still have two games to go so we will try as much as possible to work on our mistakes and bounce back.”
Nigeria play Oman next on Sunday before facing Brazil in their final group game. At this point a win alone might not suffice as they would need to score lots of goals in order to boost their goal difference in order to make it out of the group.
