But for the resilience of the members of the home based eagles in Nigeria’s quarter final match against Morocco, the team would have been back home by now from the African Nations Championship, CHAN, in South Africa empty-handed. Down by three goals as at half time, the team picked itself up in the second half to level scores at 3-3 before Abdulbakar Ibrahim’s extra time goal won the match for Nigeria, ensuring qualification for the semi final.

It was indeed a remarkable comeback from three goals down. The Moroccans soon got their opening goal through Abdelkadir El Ouadi who laid a pass to Mouhssine Moutouali, all he had to do was to chip the ball over a helpless Chizogie Agbim 33 minutes into the match. The second came shortly after through a free kick by Mouhssine Iajour from the edge of the penalty box. El Ouadi again linked up with Moutouali to score the third.

However, Nigeria came back in the second half displaying that rare Nigerian spirit that saw Ugonna Uzochukwu scoring the country’s first goal four minutes after the restart. About 55 minutes into the match, Uzochukwu provided an assist through a header for Rabiu Ali to rifle home the second goal. The equalizer arrived in a dramatic fashion when, with the clock of 90 minutes, Ejike Uzoenyi beat two players and scored with a fierce shot in the last minute of the match.

Many followers of the game have hailed Stephen Keshi for evolving the strategy to beat the Moroccans from three goals down and for keeping faith with Chigozie Agbim, the team’s goalkeeper who had a torrid time in previous matches. “Any other coach could have collapsed under the weight of pressure to drop the keeper especially after his unconvincing performances in the games against Mali and Mozambique. It’s a huge plus and uncanny demonstration of professionalism by the crew to stand by the goalkeeper in his trying time,” said Peter Rufai, former Super Eagles goalkeeper.

All it took the team to fight back, according to Keshi was: “I told them at half time that we were giving Morocco too much respect and we needed to be ourselves and play better, like we did against Bafana Bafana. Morocco are good when they have the ball, but not good when they do not have the ball.”