President of the Nigeria Football federation, Ibrahim Gusau has commended the Super Eagles coach, Eric Chelle and expressed confidence that the team would achieve more successes under the Malian.
Gusau who was speaking shortly after the Super Eagles’ impressive third-place defeat of Egypt to win their record ninth AFCON bronze medal on Saturday in Casablanca, Morocco, said the NFF is proud of their performance under Chelle.
“The NFF is proud of the team’s campaign and will continue to do its best to encourage, support and motivate the team as we go forward. As the head of a hard-working technical crew, Mr. Chelle has done exceedingly well within the one year he has been with us. He has shown enormous capacity and we will continue to work with him.”
He said though the objective of the NFF was for the Super Eagles to win the AFCON trophy and be the champions of Africa for the fourth time, “we finished in third place and won the bronze medal instead. We missed our target but my joy is in the way our team played. They have played with zest and patriotic fervour, and showed resilience and character”.
Consequently he revealed that to build on the team’s Morocco 2025 performance, preparations for the 2027 edition, expected to be co-hosted by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania has started.
According to Gusau, “the journey to the next AFCON starts immediately (in March). We do not have the luxury of time to continue dwelling on what we have done here(Morocco). We must set to work immediately.
“For now, we are excited about the squad that we have. Remember also that a couple of very good players missed the tournament as a result of injury. The bottomline is that the future looks very bright.”
