Enyimba and Remo Stars have been handed tough opponents in the first round of the CAF Champions League.
Nigerian champions Enyimba are paired with Ahli Benghazi of Libya.
The Peoples’ Elephant will travel away for the first leg.
The reverse fixture will hold in Aba a week later.
The winner of the contest will face either Coton Sport Garoua of Cameroon or Cote d’Ivoire’s ASEC Mimosa in the next round.
The country’s other representatives in the competition, Remo Stars will take on Ghanaian Premier League champions, Medeama.
The first leg is scheduled for Ghana, while the second leg will take place at Remo Stars Stadium, Ikenne.
The winner will square up against Horoya FC of Guinea for a place in the group stage.
In the CAF Confederation Cup, Rivers United are drawn bye.
The Port Harcourt club will face the winner of the tie between Etoile Filante of Burkina Faso and Senegal ‘s Ziguinchor for a slot in the group stage.
Bendel Insurance, who are the other Nigerian club in the competition will keep a date with ASO Chlef of Algeria in the first round.
Should the Benin Arsenals scale through, they will face former champions RS Berkane in the second round.
The first leg of the games is scheduled for between August 18-20, while the reverse fixture will be played a week later.
8 Comments
The excuses have already started else what is tricky about normal fixtures??? Finidi and co it’s time to get to work or make the excuses as usual when you get beaten. Lately I started to come here just to laugh at Nigeria Football and their excuses for the past 10years no major trophy after Keshi Afcon.
The very preliminary stages of CAF competitions are now referred to as “tough”…..like the first round of matches is already proving a hill to climb for NPL clubs in 2023. Yet some drunkards will want to equate this league to the one that produced 1 continental finalist for 10 years back to back from the late 80s to the early 90s…..LMAOooo
Even the NPL clubs of between 2002 and 2009 will breeze past these clubs with home and away wins.
Its the 1st round for the love of Apollos….!!!
This fixtures is already a big task for them, God will see them through
The problem i have with all of your comments above is that you guys waste too much time criticizing local players, coaches and ex internationals over the state of our football instead of directing all that energy to call-out our football administrators both at the National and state levels for taking football out of our educational system. We should be campaigning and if need be demostrating in front of our football house and that of the Federal ministry of sports. Most of our ex internationals were groomed through various school competitions in the past, that is why the skill set and ball sense of young players from that generation cannot be compared with those of our players today. When children are given the platform to exhibit their God given talents from the early age of 5-6yrs by the time they get to the age of between 12 to 15 years they will be playing football like professionals. What we have today is a system that is broken because politicians turned football administrators are not ready to invest the money for YOUTH AND SPORTS DEVELOPMENT which they receive from both federal government and fifa on annual basis, everybody wants to ride SUV and live above their means and as such they kill projects that will benefit the poor. Those of us expecting our locals teams to do wonders in Africa are wasting time, you cannot give what you don’t have if the foundation of a house is not solid and properly structured that house will collapse. Not too long ago i saw JJ Okocha revealing his trickery to some British kids , he was invited to England just to teach British Kids the skills he always display on the pitch. Okocha is a Nigerian, how many times has he ever been invited to any of our junior teams to teach them some of his on field tricks. We copied our Presidential system from the United States why can’t we also copy their sports development system? All sports are developed through their school systems in the US, i mean from grade schools to their university levels. We can push these people to do the right thing.
So it is the absence of school competitions that is the reason why your local clubs cannot reach the group stages of CAF competitions now……LMAOoo…??
How many school competitions were in existent when Enyimba won the CAF CL back to back…? Or when we produced finalists in CAF competitions between 2003 and 2009 first with Julius Berger, Enyimba, Rangers, Dolphins and Heartland…?
Your NPFL players who get transferred to whatever backwater leagues they go, do they just vanish into thin air afterwards only to return to the NPFL 1 or 2 seasons later because there are no school competitions too…?
What happened to your local clubs owning and running productive football academies and putting in place “catch them young programs” and talent discovery clinics…?
Look for another excuse. The awful performances of NPL clubs on the continent has little or nothing to do with absence of school sports.
My brother, no league nor National team will achieve anything in football without grassroot development. England with their almighty premiership thought investing million of pounds in their league was all they needed to rule the football World until their National team suddenly could not qualify for the World cup and even the European cup. What did they do, they went back to the grassroot and for the very first time England won the U17 and U20 World cup the same year. Nigeria do not have the resources to manage real football academies like the Europeans do, so the best way to mop up all talents from every corner of the Nation is going back to the school system that produced real talents for us in the past, for example Ndubusi Okosieme, Friday Elaho, Nosa Omoregie, goalkeeper Agbonavbare etc went straight from Edokpolor grammar school Benin City into the U20 National team after winning that years principal cup and there were some others who got called up to the U17 directly from secondary school competitions. The school system will help us expose real talents who might be the children of the poorest among us. The children of the poor may never make it to any team in the league not to talk of our National teams unless we create a system that can throw all our talents up no matter their background.
Dr Drey if we have Academies where will they draw their talents from, It is not enough to have few mushroom academies or football feeder teams in few cities, how will they discover the talented little boys and girls in our villages and hamlets all over Nigeria. In Europe parents invest and get involved in the development of their kids that wants to play football , they take them to training ground from the tender age of five, they help the country to groom their talents. So it is not fair to see what the Europeans are doing and say why can’t we do the same. Most parents in the villages don’t even know whether their children have talents to play football or not and as such they sometimes stop them from going for training or matches unless their trainers go and beg their parents before crucial training or match days. We have to indigenize our system if we truly want to go back to our Glory days
In what school competitions did the academies that nutured the likes of Osimhen, Chukwueze, iheanacho, Awoniyi, Amoo etc find them…?
What school competitions was hunting ground for the academies that have produced all the Nigerian born players who didnt play in your rag tag NPFL but have progressed into europe and are painting Europe red, the likes of moffi, alhassan, onyeka, onyedika, Arokodare, Yira Sor, etc find them…?
In what school competitions did Remo stars find the talents it has suddenly started churning from its academy…?
Once again, stop making silly excuses for the failures of your local league. In the Europe you are using as case study…most academies and grassroot structures are run by the clubs in the league and they dont rely on secondary schools to supply them talents.
Any serious club that wants to run an academy would organize and run weekend soccer camps or open trials on quarterly basis.
While im not saying not having a functional school sports system is good…..ascribing that to the failure of you clubs to qualify for ordinary group stages of CAF competitions is a complete fallacy. You are just trying to dribble your way away from the truth. In the 80s, the idea of school sports was the only way of hunting at the grassroots level. Academies where never in existence then….today Academies litter the whole country and they are indeed doing a good job of nuturing talents that move straight to Europe and even progess in their careers from there.
Is it not a shame that 99% of Nigerians doing well in mainstream Europe today cannot be said to be a prodcut of the NPFL….??
Or is absence of school sports also the reason why your NPFL products can hardly survive 2-3 seasons in Libyan, Tanzanian or Zambian league before running back home……???
Give us another excuse sir.