Super Eagles head coach Eric Chelle has said admitted that his team must improve defensively after their narrow 2-1 victory over Tanzania in their Group C opener of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Morocco on Tuesday.
Against all expectations, the Taifas Stars took the game to Nigeria and very well exploited the team’s defensive vulnerabilities. After the Eagles took the lead in the 36th minute through Semi Ajayi in the first half, the East Africans grabbed the equalizer in the second half and even threatened Nigeria’s goal area on several occasions.
After Nigeria regained their lead, they were close to an equalizer. Addressing journalists after the game, Chelle said his players still have lots of work to do despite beginning their AFCON 2025 campaign with a victory. The 48-year-old Malian said he and his coaching crew would analyse the game, then correct errors in the game ahead of their titanic clash against Tunisia on Saturday.
“We have to analyse this win because we did a lot of food things in the first half, we created chances to score and in the second half we gave Tanzania the chance to come back into the game,” he stated.
“We did some mistakes but we are happy for the win and the most important thing at the AFCON is to improve in every game so now after the analysis we will do in the morning we have to continue to improve because we will face Tunisia next who are a big team.
We need to improve on a lot of things defensively, put in more movement when we have the ball and when we don’t, so I praise my players for the win but we have lots of work.”
