Nigeria put on an impressive display of attacking prowess but had to hang on in the end for a narrow 3-2 win over Tunisia at the Africa Cup of Nations on Saturday, becoming the second team to make sure of a place in the last 16.<\/p>\n
Victor Osimhen opened the scoring a minute before halftime and captain Wilfred Ndidi and Ademola Lookman added two more after the break.<\/p>\n
But Tunisia staged a late comeback with goals from defenders Montassar Talbi and Ali Abdi that set up a frenetic finish.<\/p>\n
Osimhen turned provider for Nigeria’s third in the 67th minute, dragging the ball into the path of Lookman, who looked initially to have spurned a good opportunity but after hesitating was still able to get a shot away and it went in off the post.<\/p>\n
Tunisia pulled the first goal back in the 74th minute as Hannibal Mejri’s free kick was met by Talbi and the error-prone Nigeria goalkeeper Stanley Nwabali slipped in his efforts to stop it.<\/p>\n
Tunisia won a fortunate penalty with five minutes left as the ball hit Bright Osayi-Samuel’s hand as he was trying to head clear. The spot kick was thrashed home by Abdi, setting up a late surge from Tunisia with Ferjani Sassi’s header deep in stoppage time inches away from a dramatic equaliser.<\/p>\n
Egypt on Friday became the first team into the last 16 when they beat South Africa 1-0 to make sure of top place in Group B.<\/p>\n
Nigeria stay in Fes for the last group game on Tuesday against Uganda while Tanzania and Tunisia clash at the same time in Rabat.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21698,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-21729","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Tunisia staged a late comeback with goals from defenders Montassar Talbi.","published_date":null,"news_description":"Tunisia staged a late comeback with goals from defenders Montassar Talbi.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25289,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21729\/revisions\/25289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=21729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}