Striker Wasiu Alalade was imposing on Wednesday as hosts Kwara United Football Club of Ilorin whipped visiting Sunshine Stars FC 3-0 in a 2024/2025 Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) fixture.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Alalade produced a man-of-the-match performance with a brace to help his team ease past the Akure-based visitors at the Kwara Stadium Complex.
NAN reports that the match day 7 encounter saw him utilising a defensive lapse to lift the ball over goalkeeper Emmanuel Ofori for the hosts to lead in the 30th minute.
The former ABS FC striker doubled their lead seven minutes before half-time to put the hosts in cruise control going into the break.
Kwara United continued their dominance after the restart, with the visitors struggling in the midfield as they chased the hosts.
Emmanuel Ogbole was brought down after a rash challenge in the 68th minute, but Akeem Akanni missed the chance to increase the goals tally from the penalty kick spot.
But Shola Abdulraheem followed up on the penalty kick to score their third goal in the 71st minute.
After the match, Kwara United’s assistant coach, Ashifat Suleiman, expressed delight at the result and said the best of the team was yet to come out.
“Everybody can see that our game is improving match by match, and we can all see the consistency in the team.
“But we still want to maintain and keep the momentum,” Suleiman said.
Reacting to their players impressive performance in recent games, Suleiman said a change in philosophy was responsible.
“It is because of the change in the technical crew before the start of the season. It has turned things around for better,” he said.
Sunshine Stars’ Kennedy Boboye on his part took responsibility for the result and agreed that his players didn’t perform well on Wednesday.
“We lost it in the midfield and we could not withstand the pressure of Kwara United midfielders, which is one thing that we struggled with. But that is not an excuse anyway.
“They were better in all aspects of the game, and they were better than us in all ramifications,” Boboye said.
NAN reports that the result moved Kwara United to the eighth position on the 20-team log from 17th.(NAN)
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