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Nigeria’s Super Eagles B team faces a daunting task when they meet Ghana’s Black Galaxies on Saturday (today) in their second leg of the African Nations Championship qualifiers at the Moshood Abiola National stadium in Abuja, Saturday PUNCH reports.
The Eagles B suffered a 2-0 defeat in the first leg of the tie in Cape Coast and will now need to score three or more goals to qualify for the 2023 African Nations Championship finals billed for Algeria.
Second half goals from Hearts of Oak duo, Daniel Barnie and Seidu Suraj handed the Black Galaxies a 2-0 win over the Nigerians in Cape Coast in the first leg of their final qualifiers.
Both teams are seeking a return to the biggest competition for domestic players on the African continent with Nigeria missing the last edition and Ghana missing the last three.
Speaking ahead of the game, Coach Salisu Yusuf said the lapses noticed have been corrected and they are hopeful of a good result against their bitter rivals.
“What is past is past and that is the case with the match we played in Ghana. Now we are looking forward to a good match on Saturday,” Salisu said.
“We are doing all we need to do to achieve our utmost desire to be in Algeria next year. There may have been one or two lapses that caught us on the bad end in Cape Coast but we can’t continue to dwell on that. We want to achieve a good result on Saturday.
“The team needs to work even harder than we did in the short time we had to prepare for this game. We have to turn things around in Abuja.”
Ghana Coach, Anor Walker speaking ahead of the fixture said that he believes Nigeria cannot deny his team the much-coveted ticket after they had done well enough to get a 2-0 first-leg victory in Cape Coast
He also does not believe the Eagles B team pose any threat to his team’s defence.
“We don’t have an advantage against Nigeria despite the 2-0 lead,” Walker said after his side’s training on Friday.
“We are here to play the first game against Nigeria in Abuja. That is the mentality that we have ahead of this game.
“I won’t be changing my team against Nigeria because you don’t change a winning team.
“Defeat in Abuja will not be possible because I have not seen any threat in Nigeria’s attack.”