Nigeria U-23 Eagles were held to a 0-0 draw by NNL side Remo Stars at the Remo Stars Stadium in Ikenne on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In the team\u2019s first warm-up game in preparation for the U23 AFCON Qualifiers next month, Eric Chelle\u2019s team, composed of players based in Nigeria, were tested as the game finished in a goalless draw, as reported by ACL Sports.<\/p>\n
The tactician went with Michael Atata in goal, while Aderemi Adeoye of Ikorodu City, who recently made his debut in the friendly against Russia, started as captain. Former U-17 star Abdulmuiz Adeleke was selected to lead the line, and he was flanked by Sporting Lagos star Gafar Olaniyan and Rangers\u2019 Chimobi Igwilo.<\/p>\n
The game started quite well, with both teams sizing each other up in the early exchanges. Despite Remo Stars\u2019 strong organization in the opening half, they barely tested goalkeeper Atata.<\/p>\n
At the other end, Emmanuel Olisa made a big stop to deny Adeleke from opening the scoring on one occasion, while defender Stanley Joseph made a vital block to prevent the striker from getting his effort on goal while Jude Eventus then fired a free-kick wide of the mark moments later. <\/p>\n
Chelle made a couple of changes to his squad, introducing Rangers duo of Chibueze Oputa and Kenneth Igboke for Aliyu Sugau (Barau FC) and Ochobi Elias (Rivers United). Timothy Zachariah also replaced Igwilo.<\/p>\n
The changes added some bite to the attack, but Remo Stars were still largely untested, as both sides continued to cancel each other out.<\/p>\n
Remo Stars midfielder Taiwo Cole then saw his long-range effort pushed out for a corner by Atata as the clock started winding down. <\/p>\n
At the other end, Remo Stars goalkeeper Olisa also denied Adeleke once more to keep the game goalless. In the end, the two teams had to settle for a stalemate.<\/p>\n
The team will continue their preparation in Ijebu Ode\/Ikenne for the U-23 AFCON qualifiers against DR Congo next month. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the head coach is expected to name a list of foreign pros before the fixture.<\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Nigeria U-23 Eagles were held to a 0-0 draw by NNL side Remo Stars at the Remo Stars Stadium in Ikenne on Saturday. In the team\u2019s first warm-up game in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}