Super Eagles defender Oluwasemilogo Ajayi has warned that the team must learn to “kill teams off” at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), following the narrow 2-1 victory over Tanzania in their Group C opener of the competition.
Ajayi scored his second international goal and first in over a year in the 36th minute of the game when he put Nigeria ahead in Fez. The Hull City centre-back nodded home a beautiful ball by Fulham midfielder Alex Iwobi after an impressive change of passes from a corner kick.
The former Arsenal academy graduate picked up the man-of-the-match award for his display in the encounter. Speaking after the game, he said the team is working really hard in training to address some of lapses. He, however, expressed delighted that the Eagles started the tournament on a winning note.
“It was an amazing feeling. It’s always an amazing feeling to score for your country in such a game like this to get us off to a really good start. I was really pleased. It shows that we’re one team, we can’t only rely on the attackers to get goals. I think we need to get goals from all over the team.
“The defenders and midfielders, everyone needs to chip in if we want to do well in the tournament,” he said.
“I’m glad we got off to a good start. There were a few things that we could iron out and improve. There were also a lot of positives that we could take from the game as well. But like I said, we’re definitely we need to do better in terms of seeing out the game and also killing teams off. And we’ll be working really, really hard on the training filter, to put that right.”
