Confederation Cup: Nigeria vs Uruguay - goals

Uruguay have one foot in the knockout stage after beating Nigeria, 2-1.

This was a matchup of what had been two underwhelming sides in their first matches. Nigeria looked sloppy against an overmatched Tahiti, and Uruguay offered little to stop Spain. Both were looking to get a critical win, especially given each side's next respective opponent.

It was Uruguay who struck first.

In the 19th minute, Diego Forlan got on the left flank and delivered in a low cross. Edinson Cavani looked to attempt a backheel but whiffed. The pass instead landed at the feet of Diego Lugano, who completely scuffed the shot attempt, but it went into the goal anyway. You don't get points for creativity, so that goal counts all the same.

It was very poor defending from Nigeria as they didn't clear the corner kick and failed to properly mark either Cavani or Lugano.

John Obi Mikel leveled the scoring in the 37th minute. It was a nice piece of dribbling after Mikel received the pass from Brown Ideye. He looked to be taking a shot with his right foot but put it onto his left and fired it into the back of the net.

After the goal, Uruguay started to lose their hold on the match. They looked shaky at the back at times and didn't create much going forward. It was the shell they crawled into against Spain as well.

Halftime couldn't come early enough for the Uruguayans. Luckily they only had to look at a 1-1 draw rather than a losing deficit.

Uruguay went back ahead courtesy of Forlan. He's long been the engine for Uruguay, but he can't do it at 34 anymore. He is, however, still capable of scoring the occasional wondergoal.

On his 100th cap for Uruguay, Forlan was running on goal down the left. You would think that any near-post effort would be knocked away. Instead, Forlan hit it so high and hard that Vincent Enyeama had no chance.

GIF courtesy of 101 Great Goals