Tunisia coach Adel Sellimi was disappointed with his team's performance following their 4-0 defeat to Nigeria in the third place play-off of the TotalEnergies U-20 Africa Cup of Nations.
The Young Carthage Eagles didn't turn up against their Nigerian counterparts who scored inside nine minutes at the Cairo International Stadium on Friday.
Ibrahim Muhammad opened the floodgates in the Egyptian capital before Ahmed Abdullahi added a second in the first minute of the second half.
Jude Sunday was also on the scoresheet when his second half brace secured the seven-time champions bronze.
"I would like to congratulate the Nigerian team for winning the third place match and also I would like to apologise for the performance today," the former Tunisia international said.
"In the last two games we did not perform well compared to when we qualified for the semi-final and the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
"Maybe it is down to a few repeated mistakes that caused this heavy loss but we will learn from it and we got the opportunity to see a lot of players ahead of the World Cup."
The Young Carthage Eagles lost their semi finals 3-0 against Senegal in Ismailia before Friday's dropping by Ladan Bosso's Flying Eagles.
"There are deeper issues in our team that we need to address before starting to look at decisions that may have changed the game but in the end it came down to our own errors," Sellimi admitted.
"They have much better performance in them than the ones they showed in the last two games."
