U20 WC Montreal: Chileans Roast Flying Eagles Of Nigeria In ExtraTime
By Tokunbo Ojo
Montreal — Four goals in extra-time were all that Chile needed to put an end to the Nigeria’s U-20 World Cup dream on Sunday afternoon at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
With the scoreline standing at 0-0 after regulation time, the third quarter-final game of the FIFA U-20 World Cup between Nigeria and Chile went into extra-time.
The 30 minute extra-time – 15 minutes each half – was barely six minutes old when Chile’s Hans Martinez beat Nigeria’s offside trap and lobbed the ball over the on-rushing goalkeeper, Ikechukwu Ezenwa. Jaime Grondona quickly ran into the ball and gently nodded it into the empty net.
The Flying Eagles furiously protested the referee’s decision to allow the goal, which they considered to be an offside goal. But English referee, Howard Webb, stood his ground and then gave Ezenwa the yellow card.
Ladan Bosso, Nigeria’s coach, shared the sentiment of his boys about the goal. At the post-match press conference, he called into question FIFA’s anti-racism campaign and indirectly his team’s defeat to aversive racism.
“When you are looking for something (an offside call) and you don’t get it, all your doubt becomes negativity and it becomes very hard to fight,” Bosso said.
“What I’m saying is that it’s good to fight racism but it’s important not only to bring in the idea, you have to follow it to the letter so that implementation is done.”
From the moment the goal was allowed, things started going bad for the Flying Eagles. The Nigerians had evenly matched their opponents in every department of the game.
Nigeria went on to concede three more goals against the Chileans. Chile’s confidence grew with lots of diagonal counter-attack runs into the Nigerian half after that first penetration through the tight Nigerian defence.
“When you concede a goal and you feel is not a goal, you feel you’ve been cheated. But you can’t do anything about it,” said Bala Ezekiel, Nigeria’s captain.
Traditionally, Nigeria has a poor record against South American teams at the FIFA U-20 level. Prior to the Sunday’s encounter, Nigeria had played South American teams six times in the U-20 World Cup and lost five times. Nigeria tied against Brazil at the 2005 U-20 World Cup in Netherlands .
Sunday was the first time that Nigeria and Chile met in the U-20 level. The only previous meeting between both teams was in Sydney 2000 Olympic soccer tournament. Chile beat Nigeria 4-1 in that encounter. It was also at the quarter-final stage.
Chilean coach Jose Sulantay, who is now looking forward to his team’s semi-final against Argentina, in Toronto on Wednesday, does not believe racism was a factor in Sunday’s game. He believed that his team played well enough for the victory. But he clearly pointed out that “no one would have expected us to put four goals past such a solid team.”
The last time that Chile made it to semi-final stage of this tournament was 20 years ago when the country hosted the tournament. That fourth-place finish on the home soil, 20 years ago, was Chile ’s best performance so far in the U-20 World Cup.
