TheCable

Samson Tijani, the captain of the Golden Eagles, says the players have shifted their focus to winning the FIFA age grade World Cup at the finals in Brazil later this year.

Tijani said the team was just unfortunate not to have qualified for the final.

He however said himself and the rest of the squad are satisfied with the qualification of the team for the FIFA U17 tournament in the land of samba.

“Now, our thoughts are on how we can prepare very well and go to the World Cup and win the tournament,” Tijani said.

“The last set of Golden Eaglets that won the FIFA U17 World Cup in Chile, in 2015 did not win African tournament.

“But at the World Cup, the team flew high and won the tournament.

“I believe that with strong support from NFF, the training sessions that our coaches will put us through and with players working hard and playing as a team, we will win the World Cup in Brazil.”

Tijani added that he did not feel bad that the team did not win the Afcon in Tanzania.

“Personally, I did not feel too bad because our main aim was to qualify for the World Cup and we succeeded in that aspect.

“We approached every game as they came, unfortunately, Guinea defeated us on penalty shoot-out in the semi final.

“It was a very tough game. We were not scared of penalty kicks but it happened that we were destined to lose to Guinea.”

“Against Angola, we defeated them earlier in the group stage but in the third place game, they were very fast-paced and we tried to match them.

“We were surprised that we lost the game.”

The Golden Eaglets finished fourth at the 2019 Africa U17 Cup of Nations in Tanzania.