D’Tigers coach, Ayo Bakare has confessed that the world-record setting defeat his team suffered in the hands of the United States of America has left him stunned and challenged about the way forward. Bakare was responding to the questions on how to motivate his team for the remaining match and if there was any positive to take out from the game the Nigerians were embarrassed 156-73.
“I am still stunned by what happened even sitting here,” Bakare said at the post-game media conference nearly one hour after the match.
“It is really tough to get players motivated for the next match after an outing like this; this is now a huge challenge on us. We indeed wanted to do well with this and use it as a launch pad for the match against Argentina but things have turned out so differently that it leaves us flat on the ground.
“You cannot suffer this kind of loss and not find it tough motivating the players but we do not have a choice if we must progress to the next stage.”
The longest serving coach of the Nigerian team said they had never thought of beating the USA but only wanted to gain psychologically from the match.
“We never imagined beating the USA; we have to face reality. It was just going to be a barometer, a kind of test for us moving forward except that the test has turned out in opposite direction for us.
“And if we are talking of taking positives from this game, it would be strange to find any. I don’t see any positives. For me I would rather take away lessons. There are a lot to learn from a game like this that could be useful in the next matches and that is what we can take away from this. We will work on all that put down so much tonight to move on from there.”
