Okoye: I Had Sleepless Nights After AFCON 2021 Mistake

Super Eagles goalkeeper, Maduka Okoye, has revealed that he had a sleepless night after his error cost the Super Eagles a place in the quarter-finals of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.

Recall that a few minutes into the second half, Youssef Msakni fired a shot from outside the penalty area, which Okoye should have done better with but couldn’t, and that resulted in a goal for Tunisia and led to Nigeria’s exit from the tournament.

His howler didn’t go down well with Nigerians, as they criticized him heavily on social media.

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However, in an interview with OmaSports TV, the Udinese goalkeeper stated that the pain still exists in his mind.

“At that moment, I told myself I should have done better. It pains me till today, to be honest.

“You could see it was a mistake because I had to keep the ball out of the goal. If I want to play at Inter Milan, then I have to do better in such situations.

“I’ve been training hard, improving in the last two years because I don’t want things like that to happen again.

“Mistakes happen, last week, Manuel Neuer, who is one of the best, made a mistake. It’s part of the game, and it was hard for me as a young boy to go through it after it happened.

“I’m not just talking about what I read on social media, it’s more about the feeling of letting your teammates down, your family down, and letting your country down.

“At this stage, I’m not even reading the nonsense on social media anymore. Some people still talk bad about Cristiano Ronaldo despite his achievements.

“People will always say something bad about you. I know myself that I didn’t do good in that situation, and I know that I let my teammates and my country down in that situation.

“And I’m still to this day unhappy and sad about it, and I wish I could do differently, but it happened and I learned from my mistake.”