Enyimba Deserves to Savour the Moment After Away Win, But Not Yet Time to Celebrate - Finish George
Despite’s his club’s 1-0 away win in their first game of the CAF Confederation Cup second qualifying round, Enyimba of Aba’s Chief Coach, Finidi George, says the Peoples Elephant will not rest on their oars until the job is done.
Enyimba defeated Senegal’s Diambars 1-0 in Dakar on Saturday to begin their campaign on a bright note. It was Finidi’s first competitive outing with the Peoples Elephant and the former Ajax Amsterdam star says it is not yet uhuru.
Enyimba’s goal came off the penalty spot expertly scored by Cyril Olisema.
After the game, Finidi told Enyimba website that his team chose to be cautious because Diambars had more match practice than the Aba-based side.
He said: “Personally, I am happy that we played this way. We knew this team (Diambars) are a very good team technically. 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.”
“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,” he said.
Finidi said Enyimba raised their game in the second half when they realised that the home players were tired, adding that he brought in fresh legs to change the course of the game.
The former Super Eagles captain promised to continue working on the squad to ensure they are ready for the second leg of the tie, which will hold in Aba on October 24.
A win on aggregate will take Enyimba to the play-off round where they will face one of the 16 losers from the CAF Champions League’s second round to reach the group stage.