AFCON: Ebuehi joins Eagles, Eguavaoen speaks on friendly win

Tyronne Ebuehi has finally joined the Super Eagles camp in Garoua, three days before their opening match against Egypt. The Venezia of Italy player was supposed to play the Serie A match against Salernitana on Friday, but the match was called off because of COVID.

Ebuehi will hope to add to the 10 caps he has for the Eagles since he made his debut in 2017 against Togo. He joined the team on the day they played their first friendly match against Coton Sport Garoua, in preparation for the important opening game.

The Eagles, according to Coach Augustine Eguavoen, were impressive in winning 2-0, with goals from Ahmed Musa and Samuel Chukwueze. After the match, Eguavoen said, “Impressive. We played two sets of teams, the first half was 11 players, second half another set of 11 players just to see how they can fare in coping with the weather condition.

“I can tell you we struggled a little bit with the weather but with the ball possession and movement, I can say we are very impressive.”

Eguavoen continued: “Winning this game is a very good thing for us.”

“They did very well. It is a bit difficult to compare both teams now. We missed a couple of chances in the first half, and we only scored one goal. The second goal came up, missed a couple of more chances and we scored only one goal [in the second half].

“We know it’s a practice match and nobody wants to go full force because we have to try and play safe a little bit, however, I think we are impressed with everybody that came in.

“At some point, we didn’t [move the ball as well] just because of fatigue, ut when they recovered, ball movement was a bit faster and some players were doing that but as the game progressed fatigue came in and the game became a bit slower. But in front of goal, we are too few and that’s something we will have to work on.

“Ball possession is good, playing to the side is very good but arriving in the box with fewer players is not very good and it is something we will work on in the next few days,” he added.

Odion Ighalo and Jamilu Collins are the two players being expected at the time of this report. The Eagles will play Egypt on January 11; Sudan on the 15th and their last Group D game is against Guinea Bissau on January 19.