Nigeria Super Eagles head coach, Eric Chelle, has called for more aggressiveness from his squad, following the narrow defeat to Senegal in their CHAN 2024 opener on Tuesday night, www.aclsports.com reports.
Nigeria, playing their first CHAN game since 2018, lost to the defending champions 1-0 via Christian Gomis’ second-half goal at the Amaan Stadium in Zanzibar.
Speaking at the post-match press conference, Chelle admitted that his side did not do enough to win the game, adding that the Teranga Lions deserved to win.
“Senegal was more aggressive than us,” Chelle began.
“They put more intensity than us. And for me, this is logic, this is normal. They deserve this victory. In the second half, we gave the goal… a little mistake. This is normal because we never got into this game.”
“Maybe mentally, or maybe we were scared about something, but we need to try to play football. During the 20 minutes when we played football, we created a chance to score and kept the ball. But to win games and be ambitious, we need to be more aggressive… for the second ball, for the duel. In the first half, we lost every duel.”
On the way forward, Chelle added, “Okay, this is the first match. We have two games left, but we need to change our state of mind. We can’t play football if we lose every duel. We need to be more competitive and more aggressive.
“If we play like this against Sudan and Congo, we will come back to Nigeria quickly. Senegal was a big team, and we want to take it game after game. We need to win if we want to hope to qualify,” the tactician concluded.
Chelle will hope his boys can bounce back when they face Sudan in their second group game on Tuesday at the Amaan Stadium in Zanzibar.
