Golden Eaglets Head Coach Emmanuel Amuneke has admitted here that\u00a0their FIFA<\/a> U-17 World Cup Chile 2015\u00a0 Round of 16 opponent, Australia\u00a0would be a hard nut to crack\u00a0on Wednesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0at the Estadio Sausalito\u00a0in Vina Del Mar.<\/p>\n

The Aussies showed some remarkably tenacity to advance from the\u00a0tournament\u2019s supposed group of death (Group D) where they lost 4-1\u00a0to Germany, drew goalless with Mexico and edged Argentina 2-1.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been looking forward to the team we are going to play and\u00a0today (Sunday<\/span><\/span>), we realized it would be Australia. \u00a0At this stage, everybody\u00a0that has qualified must be respected,\u201d explained Amuneke. They
\n(Australia) are a very good side because we saw their match against\u00a0Argentina; they are a very good side and we\u00a0 have to respect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Nigeria have not lost a second round match in the\u00a0championship’s history, Australia were beaten\u00a0 4-0 by Uzbekistan in\u00a0their last Round of 16 appearance at Mexico 2011. Yet, Amuneke insisted\u00a0the Golden Eaglets must be at their best as Chile 2015 enters the\u00a0knockout stages.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to keep working hard and prepare our players\u00a0physically and psychologically for the match (against Australia)\u00a0especially after losing our last group match to Croatia. We have to\u00a0let the players realize that the stage we are in now is crucial and it\u00a0needs high level of concentration from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is\u00a0 a welcome development (Eaglets versus Australia) and before\u00a0Wednesday<\/span><\/span>, we would evaluate\u00a0 our players and see their state of mind\u00a0but hopefully, all of them would be ready to play on Wednesday,<\/span><\/span>\u201d Amuneke assured.<\/p>\n

The Eaglets have, in the meantime, been training in Vina del Mar since arriving there on\u00a0Saturday ahead of their date against the Aussies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden Eaglets Head Coach Emmanuel Amuneke has admitted here that\u00a0their FIFA U-17 World Cup Chile 2015\u00a0 Round of 16 opponent, Australia\u00a0would be a hard nut to crack\u00a0on Wednesday\u00a0at the Estadio Sausalito\u00a0in Vina Del Mar. The Aussies showed some remarkably tenacity to advance from the\u00a0tournament\u2019s supposed group of death (Group D) where they lost 4-1\u00a0to Germany, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[444,213,116,214,35,30,46,144],"class_list":["post-4665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golden-eaglets","tag-chile-2015","tag-emmanuel-amuneke","tag-featured","tag-fifa-u-17-world-cup","tag-golden-eaglets","tag-nff","tag-nigeria-football","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665","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=4665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4665\/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=4665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}