Finidi hails ‘fantastic Enyimba’ as Peoples Elephant beat Diambars 3-0

Enyimba’s Coach, Finidi George, was full of praises for his boys, who beat Diambars of Senegal 3-0 in the second leg of their CAF Confederation Cup preliminary game, Enyimba won the first leg 1-0 in Dakar and ended the tie 4-0 on aggregate.

The Peoples Elephant opened scores in Aba in the first minute of the second leg with Tosin Omoyele the scorer.

They doubled the lead in the 31st minute through Victor Mbaoma, while substitute, Samuel Kalu, completed the goals in the 90th minute.

Speaking after the game, Finidi praised Diambars for giving his team a tough fight, saying they will now return to the drawing board to prepare for the next stage of the competition.

He said: “Personally, I am happy that we played this way. We knew this team (Diambars) is a very good team technically, they pass the ball very well, but at the same time, we kept our composure, we kept our formation and then tried to hold them so that they cannot score an easy goal.

“In the second half, we still played that way, trying to contain them and the tempo dropped and that helped us as well to pass the ball a little bit more in the middle and gave us that opportunity with the few changes we made.

“We knew we cannot match them because I think they’ve started their league already, they’ve played a couple of games, really competitive games and they have that match rhythm so we knew if we could play to our formation, not give them that space, which I think they had in the first 20 or 25 minutes that they dominate. After that, the tempo dropped a little bit and that permitted us to play our football a little bit.”

The former Ajax of Amsterdam winger said the game changed slightly in the second half because most of the players were tired, adding, “we made some changes and brought in some fresh legs which really helped to give us that penalty.”

Nigeria’s other representatives in the CAF Confederation Cup, Bayelsa United, were eliminated 4-1 on aggregate by CD Sfaxien of Tunisia.