BY SUNDAY AKINTOYE
Head Coach of Prince Kazeem Eletu Football Club of Lagos, Isreal Adegolu has blasted his players for their average performance and being wasteful in front of goal against NLO team, AS Racines Football in a friendly match played on Friday at the Eagles Club playground, Surulere, Lagos.
AS Racines came from behind to defeat Prince Kazeem Eletu FC 3-2 in a highly entertaining match.
Speaking after the tie, Adegolu expressed his disappointment with the performance of his players stating that they were wasteful in front of the goal which contributed to their defeat.
“We lost this game by ourselves. We started well and created many scoring chances and poor in goal scoring. Look at the scoring chances we created and we only converted two goals which is not good enough for a team like Prince Kazeem Eletu boys . Honestly, the boys were not at their best today in terms of goal-scoring compared to their previous matches,” he said.
Adegolu urged players to buckle up and specifically mentioned their attackers to work on their goal-scoring before their next match.
He also frowned over the average performance of his goalie and charged him to wake up from his slumber in the next game.
“Our goalkeeper has not reached his zenith yet. He is coming up gradually and I expect him to do better than this unfortunately he conceded three goals in a match which is not good enough for the promising goalie,” he said.
As Racines Coach, Victor Agali expressed satisfaction with both teams’ performance and commended his opponents for their tactical play saying that the essence of the friendly match is for the development of the players, not the result alone.
“I look beyond the result of the match and focus more on the player’s development.I must confess that both teams played fantastic football. Eletu boys are equally a very disciplined team and played tactical football and I could see future players in the team and if they can continue like this, they would go places in their career,” he said.
Also speaking, Chairman and founder of AS Racines, Emmanuel Ibru said the game had lived up to expectations and noted that both teams paraded young players who have promising futures ahead of them.
Habeeb Hassan opened the goal-scoring in the 38th minute for As Racines when he converted the corner kick through his header.
The Eletu boys’ goal spurred them to dominate the encounter. The Eletu boys missed many goals before Precious Ogunseye, popularly known as Robinho, scored the equaliser with a superb shot from the distance.
Eletu took the lead in the early second half as Akeem Taofeek scored the second goal. Taofeek missed a one-on-one with the goalie thereafter.
Several scoring chances were created but the Eletu boys were wasteful in the front of the goal.
In the 58th minute, AS Racines was awarded a penalty, which Uju Uche quickly converted to bring the game to 2-2.
Issac Aguisonu scored the winning goal for AS Racines at close range through a corner kick in the 68th minute.
Eletu who were struggling to get the equaliser created some scoring chances but failed to to convert their chances as their opponents ran away with victory.
