Nwakali rues 'shattered' World Cup dream

By Akeem Lawal

Nigeria Under-20 national team captain, Kelechi Nwakali is disappointed over the failure of the team to qualify for the 2017 Africa U-20 Cup of Nations after a 4-3 loss to Sudan at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Lagos on Saturday.

The Flying Eagles won the first leg 2-1 in Omdurman a fortnight ago, but failed to reach Zambia 2017 after losing out on on away goals after 5-5 aggregate.

The loss means the team will also miss out of the 2017 FIFA World Cup in South Korea.

The Flying Eagles have qualified for the last six editions of the FIFA U-20 World Cups and Nwakali, who led the Golden Eaglets to win the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Chile, admitted the dream of making another appearance for the country at the next level has been cut short by the loss to Sudan.

"It's a sad moment. I must be realistic with you, our dream of winning the U-20 was cut short today. It is a lesson for us to move on and know that we can be beaten. Since four months we have been playing we have not lost any game but today it happened in a bad way and we are not qualified to go to Zambia not even dream of playing in Korea Under 20 World Cup. It is a sad thing," Nwakali told Sportsbiz247.blogspot.com after Saturday's game.

The 18 year old midfielder however refused to blame officiating or the weather for the team's loss on Saturday.

"We are all players and won't tell the referee what to do, he has the final say, he is with the whistle and determines what happens. We are players and not the officiating referee, so he did what he knows and we should believe that he is a human being and can make mistakes.

"We played in the rain and the Sudanese also played in the rain, so it has nothing to do with our loss. We should just know that it is how God wants it to be for the day.

"This is a game of football, we played 90 minutes, we lost our chances and they converted theirs and that was why we lost the game. If we had converted our chances the way we should, that means we would have won the game," the Arsenal bound player told Sportsbiz247.blogspot.com.