Salami to captain Eagles against Burkina Faso

For the first time in his Nigeria career, forward Gbolahan Salami is expected to captain the Super Eagles when they face Burkina Faso in Saturday’s African Nations Championship qualifier.

Gbolahan Salami

The powerful forward was named skipper owing to his wealth of experience with the senior national team.
“Gbolahan will wear the armband when Nigeria host Burkina Faso on Saturday,” the source told Goal.
“He has experience and the ability to lead the rest of the squad now that the team is without a skipper.”
Sharks’ Chima Akas was named assistant captain for the game billed for the Adokiye Amiesi maka Stadium, Port Harcourt.
Salami has won 13 caps and scored three goals for Nigeria since making his debut in 2014.
The winner between Nigeria and Burkina Faso will qualify for the 2016 CHAN billed for Rwanda in January.

USA coach talks tough

U.S. Under-17s head coach Richie Williams has boasted that his wards were prepared to match the world champions, the Golden Eaglets when both sides clash in the group opener at the 2015 FIFA U-17 World Cup, tomorrow in Chile.
Their opening fixture comes up at the Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos in Santiago De Chile before battling hosts Chile and Croatia at the Estadio Sausalito in Vina Del Mar and Estadio Francisco Sanchez Rumoroso Coquimbo respectively.

Richie Williams

Williams also added that his players were not intimidated by the frightening record of their Nigerian counterparts.
“I think it’s a great challenge and I think the guys will be excited. It’s a great opportunity to compete against the champions of the last World Cup and I think our guys are going to have a lot of energy, they’re going to be excited and they’re going to be ready to play, so we’re looking forward to it,” he told ussoccer.com
“I think every World Cup game is important. You can’t say one is any more important than the other. You can’t overlook any team. It’s a World Cup game and everybody’s got to be ready to go.
“Whether you think they’re the strongest opponent or the weakest opponent, it’s the World Cup and all the games are very important and very competitive and anything could happen, especially if you’re not ready to play.”
“We had four good days of training there before we open up against Nigeria.”
“When you look over the two-plus years we’ve been together, we’ve had the ability to push forward and score goals with a lot of talented attacking players, but also on the defensive end we’ve had a lot of great games where we’ve defended well.
We were able to play a good amount of international matches and domestic matches and we hope through all of those experiences we have a really balanced team of 21 players that comes together and gets positive results.”