Mikel Reveals The Advice He Would Give History-Making Uzoho During Eagles World Cup Opener

Published: June 16, 2018

Former Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel has revealed that he would be advising the young Deportivo de La Coruña goalkeeper during Nigeria's World Cup opener against Croatia this evening.

Aged 19 years 7 months and 19 days, Uzoho is poised to enter into the history books as the youngest ever Nigerian goalkeeper to feature at the World Cup when he steps out onto the Arena Baltika turf, beating the record currently held by Lille's Vincent Enyeama which has stood for 16 years.

''He is a very young goalkeeper. I think the good thing about him is that no matter what pressure he comes under, he is always very calm,'' Mikel said at Friday's press conference.

''This is very good for us, it is very good for him. He knows how to deal with pressure and this is very nice to see from a young goalkeeper like him. ''

Mikel continued : ''He has a lot of responsibilities as a goalkeeper but we try to help him as much as we can.

''The coaches, the players we speak to him a lot, I speak to him a lot as well to try to help him, during the game he needs someone to always talk to him and I try to talk to him as much as I can.

''It is also important for us to let him concentrate and do his job because he knows exactly what he's doing, we don't want to confuse him with too much talking, so I try to talk to him and try to get him as calm as possible so that he can concentrate more on the game.

''So we don't have a problem with our goalkeeping situation. We hope that he's going to have a great tournament and we all together as a team will have a good tournament.''

Uzoho has started the last five matches contested by Nigeria's senior team and posted a shutout against Poland in March 2018.

Igho Kingsley