Siasia eyes All Africa Games gold

NOT A LAUGHING MATTER – Siasia

Ahead of the 2015 All Africa Games (AAG) taking place in Congo Brazzaville next month, Chief Coach of the national U-23 team, the Dream Team IV, Samson Siasia says his target at the championship is to win the gold medal of the soccer event.

Siasia who also revealed that the team will resume camping next week added that he was not afraid of the group compromising Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast which many analysts have described as the ‘group of death’ because he has the calibre of players to prosecute the tournament.

The former international who recently returned from Congo where he led his team to qualify for the  next round of the qualifiers for the 2016 Olympics told Sports Vanguard that the game in Congo was very difficult but the team got the desired result by playing to instruction.

“The All Africa Games is going to be a good preparation for us because that will keep the team in competitive mood, instead of looking for friendly games to play. It is good for preparing to go for Olympics and we have to improve with the quality of games we will be playing.

“Again the All Africa Games may not just be a challenge for me, it is a goal because that is why we are going to the championship. Why are we going there if we don’t want to win it? We will do our best to win because that will boost our own rating and many more so since we have qualified, we will do our best to win it. And talking about the so called group of death, nobody will die but we will try the best to make sure we survive and playing against those teams will be difficult but it is better than playing the weaker teams which may beat you at last, so we will not run away from it but we will do our best.”

“The match on Congo was very difficult game because they could have scored just one goal even in the last minute and that would have been it, so that was what I told the players to be very very careful and for to be in a better position we had to score first. We had a very open chance in the next first 10 minutes but somehow we missed it but sometimes it happens like that. The bottom line is that we have to qualify.”

On the issue of his players being wasteful in front of goal, Siasia said; “ well this problem has to be there for a while but you know that things don’t just happen overnight. But these boys have once scored four goals in an sway match in the past in the first game against Gabon. Yes we have this goal scoring problem but we will still continue to work on them, we will not relent because for us to win we have to score goals.”

Siasia also stated that his team is open for any good player who has something to offer because the team is not for friendship but pure business.

— Vanguard