Glasgow Rangers of Scotland defender, Leon Aderemi Balogun has come out with down-to-earth confessions that he and his colleagues in the Super Eagles were simply not at their best during Friday’s Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Sierra Leone.
Many observes continue slamming the Eagles’ defence for falling apart in the second half, and allowed The Leone Stars romp back from 4-0 down to force a 4-4 draw at Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin City, which Balogun has now admitted was one of their biggest frailities, megasportsarena.com reports.
Balogun, who bowed out with injury in the second half, however, went on to blame the implosion on inexperience, as he hinted that the Eagles got carried away when they were leading 4-0 inside 30 minutes; only for The Leone Stars to pull off an amazing comeback to tie the game with four minutes left.
The verdict by Balogun might have been based on the fact that, among all 11 players in the Eagles’ starting line-up, the goalkeeper, Emil Maduka Okoye as well as two defenders, Kevin Akpoguma and Zaidu Sanusi were making their competitive debuts.
Nonetheless, the former Fortuna Düsseldorf, Darmstadt, Werder Bremen and SV Mainz of Germany as well as ex-Brighton and Wigan Athletic of England versatile defender assured that the Eagles have learned their lesson and declared that he is already looking forward to a better result in the return leg on Tuesday,
Balogun stated: “The team is still young; you can blame that maybe a bit on lack of experience what happened. You normally learn your greatest lessons when you make mistakes not when you are on top so this was a wake-up call and we are going to make sure that we take the right message from there.
“I understand that there is huge disappointment, you can’t believe us because we are the ones who suffered for it at first but we brought this on us. The team is definitely determined to make up for this as I said before, the only thing I’d say is don’t give up on the team because mistakes are human.
“Everybody if you just check yourself in the mirror today, at the end of the day you’ll maybe find one moment where you’ll say that wasn’t my best. Don’t forget that and just be faithful because we have been delivering some great performances over the past few years, we have some great achievements as well.”
