Nigeria suffered a narrow 1-0 defeat to defending champions Senegal in the opening match of their African Nations Championship campaign.
Though Nigeria enjoyed plenty of possession, the team failed to create chances.
Head coach Eric Chelle blamed the loss on a lack of intensity. He described the defeat as deserved in his post-match presser on Tuesday.
“Senegal was more aggressive than us. They put more intensity than us and this is logical, it’s normal—they deserve this victory.
“In the second half, we gave away the goal. A little mistake cost us. This is normal because we never got into the game mentally, or maybe we were scared about something.”
He also spoke about the importance of winning duels during the game:
“We need to try to play football. We enjoy it when we play, create chances to score, keep the ball—but when we lose the ball for 20 minutes, they score. And this is football. We need to win games, we must be ambitious, and to do that, we need to be more aggressive. We lost every duel today, and we must do better.”
Chelle emphasized the need for a positive state of mind going into the next two group-stage matches:
“This is the first match, and we have two games to go. We need to change our state of mind and be more aggressive on the pitch. You can’t play football if you lose every duel in the game.”
Another area the Super Eagles coach spoke about was the need to create more chances.
“In the first half, we created no chance to score. You need to be more aggressive—offensively and defensively. I think we played well at times, but the reality is we made just one mistake. So, we need to improve our state of mind and be more competitive, more aggressive.”
Finally, he said that a lack of desire could see the the lads get eliminated early:
“Against Sudan and Congo, if we play like this and are scared of other teams, we will return to Nigeria quickly. Senegal is a good team, and I told you that we want to take it game by game.
“Our second game, we need to win to qualify. This is football. If you want to play, you must be more aggressive. The competition just started, and there are a lot of good teams in this tournament.”
Chelle also praised the overall level of the tournament, particularly the intensity:
“There is a lot of intensity. The teams try to play, and there was a lot of quality in the game because the pitch is very good, and the teams want to play.
“I’m surprised by the intensity—it’s a lot. In my view, it’s a great CHAN tournament. Our CHAN campaign starts now, and we’ll see what happens in the second game.”
