By David Blye
Montreal — Going into Sunday’s quarter-final between Nigeria and Chile, neither side had conceded a goal. For another 90 minutes, neither side could break down its opponents.
Something had to give.
Six minutes into the first extra period forward Jaime Grondona earned a disputed goal to give the Chileans the lead. They would never look back earning a hard fought 4-0 victory.
“We certainly are happy but we had to fight quite a bit,” said Chilean head coach Jose Sulantay.
“In the second half, the changes that we made helped us to be pretty decisive and reduce the Nigerians’ ability. “We were very tired (after 90 minutes) but we managed to score the first goal and that managed to change things,” he added.
Early on both sides defended well, with chances few and far between. Forty three minutes on, Nigerian striker Ezekiel Bala fired a strong effort off a Chukwuma Akabueze cross. The shot beat Chilean keep Cristopher Toselli but not the crossbar. Bala’s strike was the closest either side came to score in the first half, which ended scoreless.
The second half continued the trend of strong defending and goalkeeping. In the fifty-sixth minute, Nigerian keeper Ikechukwu Ezemwa made a sprawling save to deny Mauricio Isla. Twenty minutes later Ezemwa again stopped Isla, deflecting the blast out for touch. Finally right before the whistle, Toselli saved a shot from forward Brown Ideye to force extra time.
Toselli was quick to credit the play of his teammates.
“Most of all, I have good defensive players and we have a good defence,” Toselli said.
In the first extra time period, Chile pressed forward hard. Six minutes in, Grondona managed to narrowly beat the Nigerian off-side trap and head the ball in past Ezemwa. Nigerian head coach Ladan Bosso was disappointed with the call, feeling his team had been discriminated against and was particularly upset considering Sunday was chosen to highlight FIFA’s “Show a red card to racism” program.
“It is one thing to have the plan to kick out racism but the next step is implementation,” Bosso said. “For what happened today on the pitch, we believe that FIFA has a long way to go to fight racism because we believe purely it was racism.”
From there, the floodgates opened. Eight minutes into the second extra time period, Nigerian defender Suraj Sodiq took Isla down in the area.
Sodiq was sent off, while Isla made no mistake on the penalty to put his side up 2-0. Soon after, Isla doubled his tally. After receiving a long ball on a counterattack, he beat the last man slotted the ball past Ezemwa. Striker Mathias Vidangossy concluded the rout with a goal in the match’s dying minutes.
With the win Chile advanced to the semi-finals, where it will meet the reigning FIFA U-20 World Cup holders from Argentina. While Sulantay respects his team’s opponents, he didn’t sell his side short.
“Argentina clearly are very strong,” Sulantay said. “They’re a five time champion in this tournament and the reigning champions. However we’ve tied with Argentina, we’ve lost and we’ve beat them before.”
The semi-final goes July 19, from the National Soccer Stadium in Toronto.
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