African vice champions Nigeria will take on Ghana’s Black Stars and Les Aigles of Mali in two top-grade friendly matches in the Moroccan city of Marrakech later this month.
Both matches have been put together by NFF’s FIFA Match Agent, Jairo Pachon of Eurodata Sport.
The clash with Ghana’s Black Stars, which comes up on Friday, 22nd March, is bound to resurrect vintage memories of a 73-year rivalry involving the West African giants, dating back to October
1951 when Nigeria bounced then Gold Coast 5-0 in a Jalco Cup encounter in Lagos.
Most recently, the two teams clashed in March 2022 in a two-legged play-off for a place at that year’s FIFA World Cup finals in Qatar, with the Black Stars edging the fixture on the away-goal rule after a 1-1 aggregate.
Nigeria and Mali, both teams incidentally nicknamed ‘Eagles’, last clashed in a friendly match in Rouen, France in the summer of 2016. The encounter ended scoreless.