Nigeria’s Special Eagles are taking a relish to their ability to pull off a single victory in the main competition of this year’s Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico, footballlive.ng reports.
Despite losing their first two matches to Brazil and Russia, the Nigerian squad took delight in their lone victory, which put them in line for a spot as Africa’s highest ranked team in the competition.
Ahead of their classification match on Thursday, the Amputee Eagles said they were happy to get a 1-0 victory against El Salvador in their last group game on Tuesday.
After failing to meet up with two previous invitations, the Eagles made their first appearance at the Amputee World Cup, but were pooled in a tough group which included the defending champions, Russia.
The team could have missed out of the tournament again in Mexico due to a financial constraint which saw them arriving Mexico seven hours to the kick off of their first game against Brazil.
Brazil gave the Nigerian team a baptism of fire, trouncing them 6-0 in the opening game and they lost the second game to Russia to end their journey in the championship, despite beating El-Salvador.
Not only did the Amputee Eagles win their last game, they also got their first Amputee World Cup goal, as Ezeji Kennedy became the first Nigerian to score a goal in the competition.
Consequently, coordinator of the team’s fundraising campaign, Fred Edoreh said they made a huge step of progress in the competition.
Edoreh declared: “We had a good experience and learnt what it takes to play at this stage of the World Cup. We await computations later to know our fate.”
