Nigeria, on Sunday, finished seventh at the IHF Emerging Nations Championship after a comfortable 36-14 victory over Andorra in Varna, Bulgaria.
The national under-24 male handball team knew they had to respond after their disappointing defeat against Great Britain in their last match and put a plan in place not to repeat the turnovers and mistakes committed in their previous.
Thus, an expected tactical switch by Coach Solomon Yola, saw Nigeria isolating top goal scorer Unai Ruiz, in the build-up of Andorra’s attack and took advantage of their depleted team to win the first half 17-6 with Faruk Yusuf dictating play not only with 3 goals but also 4 assists and 4 steals while Goalkeeper Oladunjoye Babatunde Adamolugbe, had six saves in the first half for a 50% saving efficiency.
The second half continued the same way with Nigeria pummeling Andorra with fast breaks, wings 9 meters, and 7 meters goals to earn an emphatic 36-14 victory.
Andorra needed 14 minutes and 41 seconds to score their first goal in the second half, as Nigeria’s player of the match Hakeem Salami and Oluwaseun Amusan combined to score 16 goals while Yusuf scored six more goals to take his overall tally in the competition to 28 goals and tie Cyprus’s Alexandros Charalambous.
The player of the match is Hakeem Damilare Salami.
The result is Nigeria’s second-highest victory at the IHF Emerging Nations Championship; five goals shy of their highest win in Georgia 2019 wherein they defeated Malta 40-13 while their 35-17 victory over Azerbaijan earlier in this year’s competition is their third-highest in the history of the championship.
Nigeria, thus ends their 2023 IHF Emerging Nations Championship campaign, winning two out of four matches to finish in seventh place; the same position they finished in the 2019 edition in Georgia while Andorra, who won their first match of the competition but lost the remaining three, end up in 8th place.
