Nigeria’s U23 Coach Samson Siasia faces another stern test as his team battle hosts, Senegal, for a place in the 2016 Rio, Brazil Olympic football event.

The tie is delicately balanced, after the Young Terenga Lions stole the show against their previous opponent en-route this summit. The bookmakers have already dubbed it clash of revenge mission by Dream Team VI, as they would be hell-bent on the maxim: ‘Once beaten, twice shy.’ Based on this premise, Samson Siasia and his lads would go all-out to play football of their lives in the bid to salvage their names and prestige for themselves and country. Senegal is one of the leading football nations in the continent: this interesting scenario would no doubt add pep to this clash of wits.

That Senegal defeated Nigeria earlier may not be the basis for assessment of this encounter, as the setting is quite different and too many transformations have taken place in the two teams. In short, they have since reinforced their teams with foreign-based pros, who may have missed out earlier and will be expected to attack all the way.

Siasia has, however, not hidden his desire as he has said it times without number that his team is in Senegal to win; because they hope to feature at next year’s Olympics in Brazil.

“We have nothing to be worried about, as such. We have worked on the defence line that was our headache during the group stage. No doubt our day’s opponent has shown some depth measure of a good side. We will not continue to lose sleep over that than to be ourselves and face the un-daunting task. We have come thus far. There will be no looking back. It will be a tough encounter and U-23 Eagles are ready to stop any invader. As we are talking about them, so also they are worried about us. Dream Team VI squad is not a push-over.

“We are here to win. The game in today would be different they would come out to play and that would help us express ourselves and maybe get the goals. There have been concentrated efforts to put sanity in our defence, and it paid off against Algeria in our last group game,” Siasia said, adding:

“I am not much about our goal scoring, as you can see we create lots of chances and took some of them. We cannot afford to do that against the Young Terenga Lions of Senegal today. There may not be enough chance to create as the game looks difficult. The boys are aware we will continue to press it on them. Truth is that it is a game of Now or never!

“Yes, I have told the boys. We want to be at the Olympics and I have told the boys that it is the biggest stage. We are plotting seriously. The boys on parade today will give good account of themselves. We are not worried about the massive support the hosts will be having. The boys are used to crowd, and it won’t affect their style of play.”

He said that there is nothing like playing well in the first half and losing concentration in the second half.

“The defence lost focus, it will be all action in all fronts,” he noted.

The coach was confident that the team will be more cautious and disciplined when they battle their Senegalese counterparts today.

“The Eagles need to remain focused for the entire duration of the match against Senegal, as they cannot afford to make silly mistakes of the group stages at a championship like this,” he warned.

It will be recalled that the top two teams in each group progressed to the day’s semi-final where the best three teams in the eight-team championship will qualify to represent Africa at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

•Credit: DailySportsng.com. Photo shows Dream Team.

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