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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}