CAF U-20 AFCON: Flying Eagles through to quarter-final

In the first half, two contenders for the goal of the tournament from Samson Lawal and Ibrahim Muhammad secured a 2-0 win for the Nigeria U-20 national team, the Flying Eagles. The win qualified them for the quarterfinals in second place behind Senegal, who beat hosts Egypt 4-0 to qualify with a perfect record.

The Ladan Bosso-coached team got their first goal in the 32nd minute of the first half. Lawal’s thunderous right-foot shot beat Mozambique’s goalkeeper Kimiss Zavala all ends up. It was just the tonic the Nigerian team needed after subjecting the South Africans to continuous pressure from the blast of the whistle.

They doubled their lead on 41 minutes when left back, Solomon Agbalaka won back the ball and passed to Muhammad, who took a touch before firing beyond the goalkeeper’s reach from outside the box.

The Flying Eagles were clearly superior in the first half and totally deserving of their 2-0 goal lead.

The second half was a more even affair as the Mozambique team put more players behind the ball and tried to engineer breakaway attacks after making three substitutions at the start of the second stanza, but the Nigerian team contained those attacks.

Jude Sunday and Adama Alade came on for Rilwanu Sarki and Muhammad Aminu in the 51st minute as Coach Bosso tried for more goals.Four minutes after coming on, Sunday almost scored a third for the Flying Eagles but for the goalkeeper’s intervention.

Nigeria will face Group B winners on Thursday, 2 March while Senegal will face the third-best team from either Group B or C.

In the other Group A match, Senegal beat Egypt 4-0 with all the goals coming in the second half. Pape Diop scored a hat-trick. Diol opened scoring in the 59th minute, Ibou Sane scored the second in the 69th before Diol completed his hat trick with goals in the 73rd and 76th minutes.

Senegal finished the group with nine points and scored eight goals conceding no goals.