Nigeria makes it to the final of AFCON.

Last night was an interesting night in the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament which has been going on for a few weeks. We are already edging closer to the final phase of the tournament and we got the pleasure of having two semifinal games in display last night.

Wow! Just, wow!

Since I still have a horse in the race, I tuned in to watch the game that was played between Nigeria and South Africa.

That game was a rollercoaster ride for me and for everyone who tuned in to watch the game. It's filled with a lot of talking points and some controversial calls which I can look back on and smile, just because Nigeria ended up winning the game.

Yeah, Nigeria won and is now qualified for the finals. It's not an easy win though. The boys put everything on the line to get through this stage of the competition. We even got to see a penalty shootout in this dramatic semi-final fixture.

Nigeria 1 (4) - (2) 1 S. Africa

The first half of the game was a very dull attacking half for Nigeria. Our midfielders were lost in the game and our transition from midfield to attack wasn't fluid. This affected the attacking line. Our forwards couldn't create decent chances for each other and South Africa's Goalkeeper had close to nothing to do.

As for South Africa, they created a lot of chances in the first half of the game and brought a lot of pressure to Nigeria's backline. Nigeria's defense is usually hard to break, but not for South Africa. Our defense line got breached a lot of times by South Africa and they had some goal attempts. However, Nigeria's goalkeeper stayed composed. He understood the assignment and stayed tight in-between the sticks.

The second half of the game felt more balanced for both sides. Both teams got a few decent chances and Nigeria subsequently won a Penalty in the 67th minute of the game. Our captain stepped up and buried the penalty. This set the tempo high for Nigeria as they pushed for more goals.

Another goal came for Nigeria. The goal came through a counterattacking masterpiece. The ball was moved fluidly and fastly until it got to Osimeh who buried the goal.

Guess what? The goal got canceled after a controversial VAR check. As if that's not enough, it turned out that there was a foul against South Africa in Nigeria's box during the build-up to the disallowed goal. Since that's already the case, what was supposed to be a goal for Nigeria got overturned into a penalty against Nigeria.

That's an insane uno reverse on Nigeria and all these were already happening in the 90th minute of the game. South Africa was not going to miss that opportunity. They stepped up, played the penalty, and leveled the scoreline. The Full-time whistle was blown with the scoreline at 1-1 and 30 minutes of extra was played. Nothing significant happened in each half of the extra time. So, the winner had to be decided through a penalty shootout.

Nigeria scored 4 out of 5 while South Africa scored 2 goals in their penalty shootout. Nigeria's goalkeeper bossed that side of the game. He successfully carried the team into the final round of the competition and won a well-deserved Man of The Match award.

Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop or Comma.
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