By

Eniola Olatunji 

Nigeria’s Flying Eagles on Sunday night played a barren draw with the Junior Atlas of Morocco at the 30 June Stadium in Cairo in a Group B U20 AFCON match. 

It was a night the physical football of West African team by Nigeria came to the fore but the goals refused to come. Nigeria had 8-4 shots at goal with 3-0 on target; dominated game control with 56-44% ball possession, 391-307 passes but no goal.
 
Earlier, Tunisia came from a goal down to defeat Kenya by 3-1. Kenya got the curtain raiser in the 38th minute through Lawrence Ouma Okosh only for Fares Bousima to equalize via the penalty kick after VAR review in 45+15th minute

On resumption, Ben Ali made it 2-1 in the 70th minute while overlapping Defender, scored the 3rd goal to seal the match.

So Morocco still leads group B with 4 points like Nigeria but scored 3 goals and conceded 2; Nigeria scored only one goal so far; Tunisia is 3rd with 3 points scoring 3 goals and conceding 2 while Kenya is at the bottom with no point scored 3 goals and conceded 6.
 
Going to reminiscences, Nigeria and Morocco only had three games between them since 2005 with Morocco winning no match, scoring four goals while Nigeria won a match scoring 7 goals both having two drawn games.

In an AFCON U20 match of 26th January 2005 both drew 2-2; Nigeria on 28th June 2005 in a world cup encounter beat Morocco 3-0 and on 23rd August 2019 in another of the age group match both drew 2-2.

Morocco had in the group B opener on Friday beaten Kenya 3-2 to top the group; on 23rd November 2024 she trashed Libya 4-0 in an AFCON match; played three friendly matches winning 1-0 against Ghana on 20th March 2025; beat Sierra Leone2-0 on 22nd March 2025 and again overwhelmed Ghana 4-1 on 24th March 2025. 

Nigeria had piped Tunisia by a lone goal in the group opener; Nigeria lost 0-1 to Burkina Faso on 18th October 2024; earned a 2-0 victory over Ivory Coast on 24th October 2024; another 3-1 victory over Niger Republic on 27th October 2024 and beating Ghana at their backyard 2-1 on 30th October 2024 all in the CAF qualifier.

Like Tunisia, Morocco’s record in AFCON U20 cannot withstand that of Nigeria. Morocco won the AFCON title once in 1997, placed 4th twice in 1987 and 2005 with 3 quarterfinal placing in 1983, 1985 and 2021.

Nigeria won the title 7 times far more than any other African country with four consecutive times in 1983, 1985, 1987, and 1989 coming back to win in 2005, 2011 and 2015; Got the Silver twice in 1999 and 2007; Bronze 4 times in 1995, 2009, 2013 and 2023 with on one 4th place position in 2019.

The last group B match will be played simultaneously on Wednesday at 4pm with Nigeria meeting Kenya and while Tunisia and Morocco will slug it out together.

First two teams from each group will qualify for the quarterfinal but two lucky losers will join the six teams at the quarterfinal stage.

The U20 grand finale playing at four venues that started on April 27th ends on May 18th and the four semifinalists will represent Africa at the world cup final in Chile.