Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi hailed his players for their 'character and mentality' after they overhauled a 3-0 half-time deficit to beat Morocco 4-3 on Saturday in Cape Town.
Mohsine Moutaouli scored a brace, one on either side of Iajour Mouhssine’s goal as the Atlas Lions took what looked an unassailable 3-0 lead into the dressing room.
Mohsine Moutaouli scored a brace, one on either side of Iajour Mouhssine’s goal as the Atlas Lions took what looked an unassailable 3-0 lead into the dressing room.
But Ugonna Uzochukwu got Nigeria back into the argument within four minutes of the restart to spark a turnaround.
Rabiu Ali reduced the deficit further with an exquisite volley from Barnabas Imenger's knockdown and Man-of-the-Match Ejike Uzoenyi completed the comeback with a thunderous effort just seconds to full time.
It was left to substitute Abubakar Ibrahim to apply the coup de grace with eight minutes of extra-time left.
"I just want to salute my players for the character and mentality they brought into the second half," Keshi toldKickOffNigeria.com afterwards. "It was just awesome."
Keshi said he told the players at half -time that they were showing too much respect to Morocco, and needed to impose their own game on the North Africans.
But in the end, he said, the players' determination saw them through, "At half-time, I told them this is not us, we are showing too much respect to Morocco.
"They are a good team but we need to be ourselves, we needed to be us. I told them I wanted to see the same character we showed against Bafana.
"They said we are not going home, we want to be here for the final, and that's what happened," he added.
Nigeria next travel to Bloemfontein to face the winner of Sunday's quarter-final between Ghana and DR Congo.
source--kickoffnigeria
