Manu Garba Picks Positives From 2-1 Loss To Sao Paulo FC’s Youth Team

Cadet national team, Golden Eaglets’ coach, Manu Garba is picking positives from his side’s 2-1 loss to the youth squad of Brazilian top club, Sao Paulo FC, as he believes his players learnt useful lessons from the game, megasportsarena.com reports.

Manu is staying upbeat, despite reports indicating that the Eaglets paid dearly for their failure to convert chances they created against Sao Paulo’s under-17 team, and the Nigerian side fell early behind in the 18th minute through Danilo Silva.

Unfortunately, Ibrahim Mohammed failed to convert chances created from the midfield, while Peter Ukeme was replaced after 35 minutes by Akinkunmi Amoo and the introduction of the stocky attacking midfieder presented a big threat to the Brazilians even as the first half ended with Nigeria trailing 1-0.

It was a different ball game entirely in the second half as the Eaglets came in full-blast search for the equalizer, but Monsuru Abdulsalam’s left footed shot inside the box was parried by the Sao Paulo goalkeeper for a corner kick.

The resultant corner kick was not well –connected, but there was a glimpse of hope that the equaliser was lurking around and it came few minutes later when Monsuru dribbled three defenders, surged into the box and was hacked down for a penalty kick.

Olakunle Olusegun drew Nigeria level from the penalty spot in the 70th minute, before Enrique Santos snatched the winner for his team five minutes from time with a sublime finish, but Manu said it was a good testing point for his squad, ahead of the Cadet Mundial starting on October 26.

The Eaglets continued piling pressure to break the defence of Sao Paulo for a second time but the goalkeeper came severally to the rescue of the Brazilians, while the Nigerians did have the ball in their opponents’ net after the break, but it was ruled offside.

As time ticked away, Sao Paulo’s attackers pounced on a loose ball from the midfield, launched a counter attack and a cross from the left side of the midfield was neatly jabbed into the net by Enrique Santos in the 85th minute, for the game to end 2-1 in favour of the hosts.

For Monday’s friendly, Garba started Bournemouth of England academy goalkeeper, Joseph Oluwabusola and he went the distance, while two other England-based kids, West Ham United’s Daniel Jinadu and Arsenal’s Malcolm Ebiowei were benched for all 90 minutes.

With another build-up match billed to hold on Wednesday against Japan, Manu is of a view that he will be able to get a proper assessment of his team’s current form before submitting his final squad list for this year’s FIFA U-17 World Cup later in the day.