The comfortable 4-1 scoreline belies the effort Nigeria’s beach soccer team had to summon up to defeat Egypt in Africa’s Beach Soccer Championship.
The two sides relied on brilliant defence in the opening two periods and the trend continued for Nigeria as they continued to push for a shutout having taken a convincing lead. However, the Nigerians were unable to keep Egypt scoreless, conceding a goal from a flick from Abouserie.
The win gives Nigeria their second victory in two games and they now have six points and a spot in the semi-finals. Nigeria will face another African beach soccer giant on Thursday, Cote d’Ivoire. Egypt lost their opening two matches in a heart-breaking fashion, but they have a chance to rebound against Seychelles on Thursday.
Egypt showed on the opening day that they are very unselfish players. The opening half of the opening period against Nigeria showed their opening performance was not a fluke since the Nigerians, who won big against Seychelles, were not able to score with such ease against the rigid Egyptian defence.
The Pharaohs looked like the more aggressive team in the first frame, and showed more poise in attack than they had against Cote d’Ivoire. The Egyptian goalkeeper was asked to do much more than his Nigerian counterpart in the second frame as neither side hit the back of the net going into the final minutes of the period. Frantic defending and unlucky or lucky, depending on the point of view, shots against the frame of the goal, kept the score at 0-0.
The Sand Eagles got their first goal with a splendid individual effort from Olawale, taking the score to at 1-0 in favour of Nigeria going into the final break. Abu of Nigeria quickly took matters into his own hands and scored with an acrobatic overhead kick to double the Sand Eagles’ lead. Yet the Egyptians looked comfortable and were not rattled by falling behind, in part because they were hard done by with their shots, but also because they had played extremely well.
However, their chasing of the game left inevitable gaps in defence and allowed two more quick goals to make the score 4-0 going into the last minutes of the match before Abouserie’s deft flick restored a modicum of Egyptian pride.
