Nsofor sure of Gold

The stand-in Captain for Nigeria’s Under-23 Dream Team to the Beijing 2008 Olympic soccer fiesta, Obinna Nsofor, is optimistic that Nigeria will lift the Gold in the soccer event of the Beijing 2008 Olympics when it plays Argentina on Saturday in the final.

While Nigeria pummeled Belgium 4-1 to advance to the final, Argentina disgraced arch rivals, Brazil 3-0 to attain same feat.

In his words, "I believe that it's our destiny to win the gold. Both teams deserve to be in the final, but I think we will be the ones who end up as the champions."

"We're really confident, but we'll just have to wait and see, because Argentina has the likes of Messi, Aguero, Riquelme and Mascherano in its squad and they will give us a hard match," he continued.

"But it's not going to be easy for them. We have some great individual players and the coach has moulded us into a team. We're working hard for one another and we're getting to be more compact in our defense.

"We have only conceded three goals during this tournament, and I think we're getting better as a team with each game that we play. For me, our best performance was against Belgium, and our second-best performance was against Cote d'Ivoire in the quarter-finals. But we want to be at our peak for the final match, and I believe that we will be."

It will be re-called that the Argentines though not in the Olympic Games denied Nigeria the chance of lifting the trophy in the Netherlands in a controversial game where Nigeria lost 1-2.

This time with the caliber of players Coach Samson Siasa is parading, the football Gold Medal will surely come down to Mother Africa.