Posted by By CHIMAOBI UCHENDU on
Ajax Cape Town of South Africa may receive more than they bargained for when they take on Enyimba International Football Club of Nigeria on Sunday in a continental championship, says coach Okey Emordi.
Ajax Cape Town of South Africa may receive more than they bargained for when they take on Enyimba International Football Club of Nigeria on Sunday in a continental championship, says coach Okey Emordi.
The Nigerians left for South Africa, Wednesday, to keep a date with Ajax in the first leg of the Champions League battle. And Emordi assured that his boys are no strangers on the terrain.
Emordi dismissed, with the wave of the hand the supposed intimidating credentials of the North Africans, as he simply said they are living in the past and that those that live for the future, like Enyimba, would continue to dominate the CAF Champions League competition.
"We are battle ready," Emordi told Daily Sunsport. "We surely shall defend the cup successfully, and I don't see how Ajax will dent our image.
"Those shouting about the threat North Africans pose to our ambition of winning this trophy for the third time are living in the past.
"Yes, it is true they dominated the scene in the past, but we cannot say they are doing same now. The first time Enyimba won the cup, they played the North African oppositions and learnt how to play against them, so what we are doing now is to consolidate on our grip on the cup.
"Before I joined Enyimba, I played the North Africans with Rangers and defeated them, so what is the big deal about them? People should be talking of the South African team that reached this stage against all permutations.
"We are playing them first this weekend in South Africa, and that is what is on my mind now. We know little or nothing about Ajax. That will make the match somehow difficult, but I want to assure our fans that they should be rest assured that we have a team that will face the South Africans squarely.
"No team can intimidate us. Rather they will be intimidated by our pedigree as African champions. We will not relent until we win the match.
"We envisaged the exodus of most of our players that made history with us last year, and were prepared for their exit. That's why we are not in any tight situation right now. We made recruitment earlier last year because we saw that most of these boys have over stayed their usefulness with the team. We went for younger players who are faster with the ball and they have not disappointed us, so far.
"We played 19 matches in the first half of the local league and lost only three. That is not a bad result because we hope to achieve better results at the second half of the league.
"Do not forget that we have not won the Challenge Cup, so our target this year is to add that to our silverware collection.
"Our loses to Kwara United, El-Kanemi and Gabros was not a surprise to me. It is part of the game; you win some, you lose some, but you must be focused on your targets. The Kwara United match was so bad in the sense that we lost about seven regular players days before the match. This affected our play. This showed in the uncoordinated way we played.
If we were complete, they would not have defeated us. Though the loss made us sit-up because the reserved players now know that they have to work hard to be fielded in other subsequent matches.
"I assure Nigerians not to panic because if we could come out of the preliminaries unscratched, we would do same at his group stages.