Head coach of Nigeria Eric Chelle insists his outfit have a lot of work to do despite securing victory in their 2025 Africa Cup of Nations opening game.
The Super Eagles capped off an impressive start to the continental showpiece, inflicting a 2-1 victory over the Taifa Stars of Tanzania in Tuesday.
Nigeria secured all three points in their first outing, but Chelle was quick to strike a balanced tone after the final whistle, acknowledging both positives and shortcomings in his team’s performance.
“I made a lot of choices; some were good, some were not good. I told the journalists that I have my vision and I’m the coach.”
The Super Eagles started brightly and dominated large periods of the first half, an aspect the coach highlighted while stressing the need for honest assessment.
“We have to analyse this win because we did a lot of good things in the first half; we created chances to score, and in the second half we gave Tanzania the chance to come back into the game.”
“We did some mistakes but we are happy for the win and the most important thing at the AFCON is to improve in every game so now after the analysis we will do in the morning we have to continue to improve because we will face Tunisia next who are a big team. We need to improve on a lot of things defensively, put in more movement when we have the ball and when we don’t, so I praise my players for the win but we have lots of work.” He said.
Nigeria will lock horns with Tunisia in their second group game scheduled for Saturday, December 27, 2025.
