S P R T Nasarawa United midfielder Osanga targets Better second NPLF stanza

With the second phase of the 2022/23 Nigeria

Premier Football League Season set to commence, Nasarawa United’s winger, King Osanga, has assured that they would turn around the fortune of the Club.

Osanga(MON) who featured in five out of the nine games for the Solid Miners in the first stanza of the league and scoring two goals, stated this to the Club’s Media on Monday in Lafia.

“We are battle ready for the second half of the league, even though our start to the season wasn’t good enough.

“We are bringing our heads together for the survival of the team. Hopefully, we are up and ready for the second stanza.

“We work as a collective team. No tree can form a forest. I will always do my best by bringing my wealth of experience to take the team out of the position we ended in the first stanza.

“We don’t deserve to be where we are in the league. You know the history of the Club, but we can finish among the best at the end of the season.

“We will approach each game as it comes, and this begins from our next game away to Remo Stars whom we beat 2-0 in our last home game before the league went on a break.

“Regarding boosting the team with some new legs, I think it’s a welcome development and we hope that whoever is brought into the team would add to the progress of the team.”

The Nigerian junior international won the FIFA U-17 World Cup for Nigeria in 2007 in South Korea and also adorned Nigeria’s colours at the FIFA U-20 World Cup in Egypt in 2009.

Nasarawa United started the 2022/23 league campaign on a rather sour note, suffering six defeats, winning only two and drawing one game in the abridged Group ‘A’ fixtures, sitting at the 9th position, with seven points.”

But the Coach Bala Nikyuled team is doing everything possible for better performance upon resumption, with their first match away to Remo Stars whom they had beaten 2-0 in the first leg in Jos on 20th February, 2023.

World Cup ticket

By Amaechi Agbo

Coach Isah Ladan Bosso believes he has the men to push Uganda’s Hippos off the way in their Africa U20 Cup of Nations quarter-final duel on Thursday and reach the FIFA U20 World Cup finals scheduled for Indonesia, 20th May – 11th June.

Both teams clash at the 22,000 -capacity Suez Canal Authority Stadium in Ismailia as from 7pm Egypt time (6pm Nigeria time) on Thursday, and the Flying Eagles’ tactician says that while he does not underrate the Hippos, he trusts his charges to make Nigeria proud and reach the tournament’s last four.

“Before we left our training camp in Morocco, the NFF President, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gusau told us clearly that the first objective should be getting a ticket to the FIFA World Cup. We are at that most important stage now and we cannot afford to falter.

“We are aware that Nigerians are looking up to us to deliver. While our mission remains bagging the World Cup ticket, we are also eyeing the trophy, which is still a number of matches away.

For the moment, we have Uganda in our view and we are working hard to see that we control proceedings on Thursday.”

Two-time silver medallists and one-time bronze medallists Nigeria are seeking to make another appearance at the FIFA U20 World Cup finals. They finished in third place when the tournament was staged in then USSR in 1985, beating the host nation on penalty shoot-out in the bronze medal match. Four years later, in Saudi Arabia, the