You must subdue Sierra Leone at home, Pinnick charges Eagles
President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Pinnick has tasked the Super Eagles to beat Sierra Leone 4-0 in Freetown when they battle in their next Africa Cup of Nations qualifying fixture on Tuesday.
Gernot Rohr’s men travel to Sierra Leone for the reverse fixture of Friday’s game after they surrendered a four-goal lead and settled for a 4-4 draw in Benin.
The result left Nigerians distraught, however, Pinnick has charged them not to just defeat the Leone Stars but they should regain the lead they had before half-time at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium.
“It is for us to go to Sierra Leone and beat them that 4-0. It is not winning, winning is an understatement,” Pinnick told NFF media.
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“It is to give them that 4-0 and make sure they don’t score one. That is the only thing we will do from the blast of the whistle till the end of that game.
“The beauty about falling down is the resurgence in us to bounce back, bounce back in a grand style because what you’ve done to them is that you’ve given them the confidence that Nigeria is beatable.
“We must re-engineer this team, we must go to Freetown and we must beat them in Freetown by those four goals so that we would know truly that the Eagles have landed.”
The NFF met with the Super Eagles technical crew on Saturday, but the outcome of the meeting is yet to be made public.
Pinnick, immediately after the match, described the 4-4 draw with John Keister’s men as the ‘worst result he has seen in his life’.
“I will say it the way it is in my heart and the hearts of so many Nigerians; the truth is that we can’t be leading 4-0 to Sierra Leone and concede four goals for no reason, there is no reason,” he told the team in their dressing room.
“Since I became the president of NFF, this is the worst result I have seen in my life and in the next few days, I wonder how I’m going to sleep.
“It’s not because of losing, it’s not because we won’t qualify for the Nations Cup, it’s certainly because this is towards the end of the year, you know the passion, the love Nigerians have for this game.
“It’s football, definitely, it’s football; it can go either way, but what happened to us? Were we complacent? Were we just so comfortable that we were leading 4-0 and all of a sudden, the goals started coming in?”