Nigeria U-23 team\u2019s Head Coach, Samson Siasia has expressed confidence his boys will come out of the cauldron of Pointe Noire in flying colours after Sunday\u2019s potentially \u2013explosive 2015 African U-23 Championship final qualifying match.<\/p>\n

A slim 2-1 advantage from the first leg in Port Harcourt means a battle is at hand, in a Congo-Brazzaville reputed for all manner of tactics against every visitng team.<\/p>\n

Yet, Siasia is unfazed as he announced just before the team\u2019s departure on Thursday that he relishes big games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love big games, and I\u2019m not shy to say so. This is with every sense of modesty. Pointe Noire is another tough session, but I look forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Siasia was in charge of the Nigeria U-23 team that also to negotiate tough runs to the Men\u2019s Football Tournament of the 2008 Olympics. On November 16, 2007, the team needed at least a draw against Ghana in Accra to be in good stead for the ticket, and duly played out a 0-0 draw. Siasia\u2019s boys completed the job with a 3-0 win over South Africa in Abuja in March 2008.<\/p>\n

Although Siasia\u2019s team lost the Olympics gold to Argentina in Beijing, the former Eagles\u2019 skipper was in charge when the Super Eagles achieved a first \u2013ever win over the Argentines \u2013 a 4-1 win in a friendly in Abuja on June 1, 2011.<\/p>\n

The former star forward was also in charge of the Nigeria U-20 team that won silver at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in The Netherlands in 2005.<\/p>\n

Recently, Siasia\u2019s U-23 boys won both away matches on the road to qualifying for the 11^{th<\/sup> All-Africa Games football tournament \u2013 a 4-1 win over Gabon in Libreville and 2-1 defeat of Zambia in Lusaka.<\/p>\n}

\u201cIt will not be easy; nothing good in life comes easy. But we will give it our very best shot and return from Pointe Noire with victory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigeria U-23 team\u2019s Head Coach, Samson Siasia has expressed confidence his boys will come out of the cauldron of Pointe Noire in flying colours after Sunday\u2019s potentially \u2013explosive 2015 African U-23 Championship final qualifying match. A slim 2-1 advantage from the first leg in Port Harcourt means a battle is at hand, in a Congo-Brazzaville […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[116,144],"class_list":["post-3731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-olympic-team","tag-featured","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}