An 81st strike by Faruku Miya was all Uganda's Cranes needed to ruin Vincent Enyeama's 100th cap celebration last night at the Akwa Ibom International Stadium in Uyo.
The visitors from East Africa were no doubt the better of the two sides in an international friendly packaged to keep Nigeria and Uganda in shape ahead of the AFCON 2017 qualifiers starting in June.
In a goal mouth melee, Miya's shot from inside the box was partly deflected by new boy, Akeem Latifu. Enyeama who was looking forward to keeping a clean slate to mark his great day for Nigerian football, struggled in vain to stop the deflected kick. In the process, he helped parry the ball into his own net.
The result which has now given the Ugandans a 4-3 advantage in a head-to-head with Nigeria, is likely to further dampen the enthusiasm of the Eagles who are scheduled to play the Bafana Bafana of South Africa in another friendly in Nelspruit this weekend. The performance of the mostly, new invitee Eagles, was not convincing in any way.
They struggled to put together passes and were uncoordinated having only trained together once. CSKA Moscow forward Ahmed Musa was again full of running but had no end product to show for all that.
Caretaker coach Daniel Amokachi handed debut to Watford's Odion Ighalo, Moses Simon of KAA Gent, and Latifu, but the debutants failed to convince the scanty crowd at the stadium they merited the olive green Nigerian jersey they spotted. On 14 minutes, the Cranes almost opened the scoring but Jeffrey Massa's free kick was deflected away for a corner. Uganda continued to probe and in the 18th minute, Chima Akas's fortuitous blocked almost resulted in an own goal.
Nigeria responded immediately when a decent passing moved freed Steven Ukoh whose rasping shot from outside the box warmed the palms of Onyango.
Massa continued to remain Uganda's main goal threat early on. He fired in another powerful free kick from a tight angle in the 26th minute but saw his effort fly wide off the target.
Three minutes before the break, Onyango had to be alert to deny Musa a crack at goal as the CSKA man tried to make the most of a defensive error.
Substitute Simon brought some bite to the Eagles attack when he was introduced. In the 63rd minute his shot from outside the box was wide off target and moments earlier he was denied by Onyango at the near post. Aaron Samuel was thrown into the fray as a late substitute in place of the misfiring Ighalo, but the Cranes held out for a richly-deserved win.
Post a Comment
EmoticonClick to see the code!
To insert emoticon you must added at least one space before the code.