CAF Confederation Cup: Group Stage will be tough for Rivers United – Stanley Eguma

Rivers United head coach, Stanley Eguma has heaped praises on the team’s players for qualifying for the CAF Confederation Cup Group stage but warned that there are still lot if work to do as they face tougher opponents as competition progresses.

The 2021/22 Nigeria Professional Football League champions defeated Al Nasr of Libya 6-1 on aggregate to progress to the group and Eguma said the players’ resilience and discipline were responsible for their group stage qualification.

“The team has done well but there is a lot of work ahead to be done because in the next stage we are going to meet teams that have done very well also, so, it is going to be tough”, he told the club media

Eguma spoke further about the team victory over Libyan Al Nasr, said: “It was a very good and highly contested game. The Libyans prepared very hard to see if they can turn the result in their favour but unfortunately, they met a resilient team, we prepared very well and the players are very focused.

“Since we landed in Benghazi, it has been hell because the Libyans kept attacking us, distracting us and doing a lot of things to make us lose focus.

“Today they still attack us, they don’t even allow us to do warm-up and there was a lot of pandemonium before the game started.

But we have a very good and discipline side, we managed to put ourselves together, knowing fully well that the pride of the country is at stake and the players rose to the occasion.

“Despite all the intimidation, we have the game under control and it was a good result for us.”

Rivers United, Lupopo FC, Al-Akhdar of Libya, AS Bamako of Mali are placed in Pot 3 of the CAF Confederation Cup group draw