The Flying Eagles advance to the quarter-final of the ongoing FIFA U-20 World Cup for the first time in 12 years after defeating host Argentina 2-0 at the Estadio San Juan del Bicentenario in the early hours of Thursday, The PUNCH reports.<\/p>\n
Second-half goals from Ibrahim Muhammad and Rilwanu Sarki secured a shock win for Ladan Bosso\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n They will face either Ecuador or South Korea in the quarter-final of the competition in Santiago del Estero on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n The Flying Eagles started brightly but as the first half wore on, La Albiceleste dominated play.<\/span><\/p>\n Striker Alejo Veliz had two scoring chances to break the deadlock as the break approached but missed those sitters.<\/span><\/p>\n First, his glancing header went narrowly wide in the 14th minute while his second attempt before the break was saved by Kingsley Aniagboso who was in goal for Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n In the 61st minute, The Flying Eagles broke the deadlock through Emmanuel Umeh when he flicked the ball over the top for Muhammad, who slotted home a low shot past goalkeeper Federico Gerth.<\/span><\/p>\n The goal saw Argentina pile the pressure in search of an equaliser and in the process they had 20 shots at goal as against Nigeria\u2019s nine.<\/span><\/p>\n Javier Mascherano\u2019s boys came agonisingly close when Luka Romero\u2019s low drive from a distance hit the upright of the post for Daniel Bameyi to put the ball to safety.<\/span><\/p>\n In additional time, substitute Victor Eletu came off the bench for Ibrahim Muhammad to make an assist for Haliru Sarki to score Nigeria\u2019s second on the night and secure a famous triumph for Nigeria for the first time in the competition since 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n Nigeria\u2019s win on Thursday ended a run of 10 straight U-20 World Cup victories for Argentina. The young La Abliceleste had won all seven games when they hosted the tournament in 2001, and their first three at this edition.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Flying Eagles advance to the quarter-final of the ongoing FIFA U-20 World Cup for the first time in 12 years after defeating host Argentina 2-0 at the Estadio San Juan del Bicentenario in the early hours of Thursday, The PUNCH reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[884,6607,92,4165,7069],"class_list":["post-13804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-argentina","tag-flying-eagles","tag-nigeria","tag-quarter-finals","tag-u-20-wcup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13806,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13804\/revisions\/13806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}