Liberia Game a Must Win for Super Eagles
Nigeria will meet Liberia in a crucial CAF second round 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying match at Stade Ibn Batouta on Saturday.
Kick-off is at 18:00 CAT.
The Super Eagles head into the encounter with a two-point lead atop Group C. Nigeria succumbed to a shock 1-0 loss at home to the Central Africa Republic last month before claiming a 2-0 win away to the same opponents, to maintain their place at the summit of the group.
Cape Verde won back-to-back fixtures against Liberia in October to close the gap between themselves and Nigeria to two points and will meet the three-time Africa Cup of Nations champions in Lagos next week, in what could be a group decider. The Lone Stars have already been eliminated from contention.
Nigeria head coach, Gernot Rohr, has lured Odion Ighalo out of international retirement for the important set of qualifiers while he will also be able to call on the exciting trio of Wilfred Ndidi, Alex Iwobi and Samuel Chukwueze.
“We are happy to have the injured players who couldn’t come in the last matches return,” Rohr said in Tangier this week.” Ndidi is here, Iwobi is back and Chukwueze so as it is now, we have a very full squad to go for the victory,”
“I am also happy to see Odion Ighalo and my assistant, Salisu Yusuf, return to the squad.
“It’s a good feeling here and we hope the weather stays nice as it has been since we got here. Everything is calm and the team has been able to concentrate very well,” he added.
Liberia will have nothing but pride to play for but this makes them a very dangerous opponent.
“The most important thing from our perspective is that we are playing for pride and for our country,” said Lone Stars head coach Peter Butler.
“We’ve got a lot of respect for the Nigeria national team and Gernot Rohr has probably the complete opposite problem which I have. He doesn’t have a funding issue, he and his team came here on a private jet, he has a wonderful array of talents to choose from but we will be competitive as we have been in other games that we’ve played,” he added.
A Kelechi Iheanacho brace led Nigeria to a 2-0 win over Liberia in the reverse fixture back in September.
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