Saturday May 30, 2020. 12:00
Nigerian attacker Alex Iwobi has reflected on his national team’s exit from the last two major international tournaments and described them as “heartbreaks”.
The Super Eagles were ousted from both the 2018 World Cup and the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in dramatic fashion: losing in the dying minutes to Argentina to exit in the group stage in the former, while the latter saw a semifinal tussle decided by a last-gasp free kick from Algeria’s Riyad Mahrez.
Speaking on Instagram Live, Iwobi stated: “Both of them were serious heartbreaks, to describe that feeling is painful.
“The Argentina one, it was hurtful because I saw how much efforts we put in, how much we’ve been training so hard, the qualifiers we’ve done our best. It was [Marcos] Rojo that was able to get the goal.
“It’s nice to play but when you don’t play you still support the team as equally as if you’re playing, that one hurt. I remember all of us were head down in the changing room.
The former Arsenal star added, “The Algeria one where I participated, last free-kick of the game, that one was really painful because we did all our best.
“You cannot blame anyone, at the end of the day we win as a team we lose as our team. We have to congratulate Mahrez because the free-kick caught everyone off guard, it caught everyone by surprise.
“Both experiences were very tough for the team but we move on and go again, that’s the mentality we have. We can’t dwell on our past, we have to put things right in the future.”
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