Golden Eaglets Coach Manu Garba has said his team will qualify for the African Junior Championship after they beat Mali 2-0 on Sunday."We have to praise these boys for being able to play and score two goals against Mali and I'm confident we would secure the needed result in Bamako to qualify for the tournament in Morocco," said Manu.

"If we had taken some of those chances we missed, we would have scored more goals, but I'm confident we can beat them in Bamako."The Eaglets came up against a physically bigger team but the coach insisted this cannot stop his team's charge to next year's finals in Morocco.

"Obviously, you can all see that they are bigger than our boys but that is not our problem because we know that size doesn't play football," he said.

This was obviously the Eaglets toughest match so far in the campaign, but they could have scored more goals if not for some glaring misses particularly in the second half of the keenly contested match.

But the two goals in either half of the match by defender Wilfred Ndidi and Alhassan Ibrahim secured victory for the Nigerian schoolboys. The Eaglets went on break yesterday and resume preparations today for the return leg in Bamako in a fortnight.