U-20 Afcon: Tunisia coach Abdel Sellimi explains heavy loss to Nigeria

By Oyediji Oluwaseun Babatunde

Head coach of Tunisia U-20 side, Abdel Sellimi expressed his disappointment after his team’s 4-0 loss to Nigeria in the third-place match of the 2023 U-20 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) on Saturday.

The Tunisian put all foot wrong against the Flying Eagles claimed the contest, beginning with Ibrahim Muhammad’s opener before Ahmed Abdullahi’s strike and Jude Sunday’s brace at the Cairo International Stadium.

“I would like to congratulate the Nigerian team for winning the third place match and also I would like to apologies for the performance today,” former Tunisia international Sellimi told media.

“In the last two games, we did not perform well compared to when we qualified for the semi-final and the FIFA U-20 World Cup. Maybe it is down to a few repeated mistakes that caused this heavy loss but we will learn from it and we got the opportunity to see a lot of players ahead of the World Cup.

“There are deeper issues in our team that we need to address before starting to look at decisions that may have changed the game but in the end, it came down to our own errors.  They have much better performance in them than the ones they showed in the last two games.”