Nigeria Content Online

A
trio of top British athletes, including world triple jump champion
Phillips Idowu and Olympic 400 metres gold medallist Christine
Ohuruogu, pulled out of the troubled Commonwealth Games in India on
Tuesday.

Idowu’s withdrawal
was based on security concerns while Ohuruogu, plagued by injury
problems this year, suffered cramp in a training session over the
weekend and decided to pull out as a precaution from the event starting
in New Delhi on October 3.

Lisa Dobriskey,
Commonwealth 1,500 metres champion and fourth over the distance at the
European championships in Barcelona last month, also withdrew saying
she had run out of time after struggling with injury earlier in the
season.

Idowu outlined his
worries about attending the Games on his Twitter page, writing: “Sorry
people but I have children to think about.

My safety is more important to them than a medal.”

Organisers have endured a raft of criticism from competing teams over unfinished and unclean athletes’ accommodation.

“I am disappointed
to miss the Commonwealth Games after working so hard to get fit since
my quad injury in June,” Ohuruogu, 26, said in a statement.

“However, with the 2012 Olympic Games on the horizon the last thing an athlete wants to do is risk re-injury to the same muscle.

“It was very
important for me to be cautious in dealing with my previous injury;
although training was progressing well, intense competition over three
days may prove to be more harmful than good and may compromise the long
term functioning of the muscle.”

Dobriskey said she
had been looking forward to competing but had taken medical advice to
rest and focus on winter season training working towards the 2011
indoor season.

“I’m really
disappointed, but I just ran out of time. I want to wish all the best
to the athletes out in Delhi,” she said in a statement.

The Games have already been hit with several high profile
withdrawals, including multiple Olympic champion Usain Bolt and Kenya’s
David Rudisha, who broke the 800 metres world record twice last month.

Amos
Adamu, an executive committee member of FIFA, along with former acting
president of the Nigeria Football Federation Aminu Maigari, and 27
others, are expected to appear in court today to face contempt charges.

Failure to appear at the Federal High Court sitting in Lagos will have dire consequences for any of the parties concerned.

The presiding
judge, Okon Abang had on Tuesday adjourned the hearing to today after
repeated apologies from the defendants’ counsel, but not before
declaring that he will be compelled to summon members of the NFF to
court if they once again failed to show up. Sixteen members of the
Federation had failed to appear in court on Tuesday to face contempt
charges for allegedly contravening a restraining order not to hold the
contentious August 26 elections into the NFF board.

In their defense,
their counsel Joseph Nwobike, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, had said
their absence in no way meant to disrespect the court.

“I have accepted
the apology given by the learned SAN,” Mr Abang said on Tuesday, before
adding: “If those that are not in court fail to appear at the next
adjourned date, I will have no choice but to compel them to be brought
to court and then their absence will have a different colouration.”

The National
Association of Nigerian Footballers (NANF) had filed a suit against the
NFF and others, alleging that the process of the election was perfected
without recourse to its members, contrary to the clear wordings of
FIFA’s statute and other extant laws relating to football
administration in Nigeria.

Besides Adamu and
Maigari, other co-defendants in the suit are Davidson Owumi, the
chairman of the Nigerian Premier League; Sports minister, Ibrahim Bio;
the sports ministry’s Director General, Patrick Ekeji; and the chairman
of the NFF’s electoral committee, Abdulkareem Mustapha, who had
alongside Maigari, following the nullification of the August 26
elections, filed an appeal before the Court of Appeal in Lagos, asking
the appellate court to set aside the ruling of the Federal High Court,
which nullified the election.

Despite the judge’s warning, it however remains doubtful if Adamu
will be able to make an appearance in court as he is presently in
Trinidad and Tobago overseeing the ongoing FIFA Women’s U-17 World Cup.

Former
Super Eagles midfielder, Emeka Ezeugo has been relieved of his position
as the assistant coach of Nigerian Premier League side, Heartland FC.

The club’s media officer Cajetan Nkwopara said Ezeugo was officially sacked by the Owerri-based side on Monday.

He also revealed
that plans were underway to fill the vacant position, but declined to
disclose the names of those shortlisted for the job of assisting the
club’s chief coach Samson Siasia, whose job, he insists, remains intact
despite the club’s early exit from this year’s CAF Champions League.

“A couple of names have been mentioned but as far as Siasia is concerned, his job is safe,” said the Heartland official.

Ezeugo joined
Heartland prior to the commencement of their CAF Champions League
campaign on the recommendations of Siasia with whom he played alongside
in the Super Eagles beginning from the 1988 Seoul Olympics to the 1994
World Cup in the United States of America.

“Yes, I got the
letter on Monday,” Ezeugo told Supersport.com on Wednesday. “The issue
of sack is often synonymous with the life of a coach because it is
either you’re hired or fired. But I will be leaving Owerri for Lagos
now because for me life must go on.”

Contract dispute

According to the
club’s chairman, Ignatius Okehialam, Ezeugo’s stay with the former
Nigerian league and FA Cup champions had to be cut short after he
refused to accept the club’s contractual terms thus leaving the club’s
management with no option than to end his stint with the side.

“After I discussed
with Emeka alongside his lawyer and his brother, I made an offer,”
Okehialam told Supersport.com. “He said he was going to consider it. He
came back to state his terms and I told him that I cannot go beyond my
offer for him.

“So he started work
and I made a contract and gave to him, which he read. I also asked if
the contract was okay with him and he said it was. We begged him to
sign the contract but he didn’t, and I didn’t have a contract to be
able to get out money for him since Heartland is owned by the Imo State
government. So something had to happen at some point.

“But I must say that Emeka is a fantastic person and I’d have loved
to work with him but unfortunately this had to happen and I wish him
the best,” said the Heartland boss.

Former Super Eagles
coach, Amodu Shuaibu has been appointed as a Consultant and Technical
Adviser for the revival of football in Edo State’s education sector by
the state Government.

The state governor,
Adams Oshiomhole announced the appointment yesterday, during the
presentation ceremony of the report by the committee set up by the
state government for the revival of football in educational
institutions in the state.

According to the governor, Edo State must reclaim its leadership role in sports and football in particular.

“We have a duty to
the youths as well as to create an enabling environment and support and
hopefully they would become world stars in the future. To this effect,
we have appointed Coach Amodu Shuaibu as Consultant and Technical
Adviser to handle this project and provide the leadership,” he said
while calling on the youth in the state to take advantage of the scheme.

Earlier, the
Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Miss Iziegbe Anita Evbuomwan, while
presenting the report, said it is a blue print for the development of
football in tertiary and primary schools.

According to her, the scheme which will enhance the socio-economic
potentials of the youths will also stem restiveness. Amoudu thanked the
governor and the people of the state for the appointment.

It seems Nigerian sports has become inured to
crisis. At a time the men charged with the responsibility of seeing to its development
are supposed to be rolling up their sleeves and putting their shoulders to the
wheel, we are seeing them being consumed by ambition.

Ambition by itself is not evil. Every human
being should have aspirations; without something to look forward to, life would
be truly meaningless. However, the kind of ambition that a lot of our
administrators have is the rabid kind; without any redeeming quality
whatsoever.

For them the injunction by Frantz Fanon that,
“if any philosophy is here being preached it is that man must not only exist
but must live well, the measurement of any intellectual activity being the
welfare of the people”, clearly has no meaning.

We have seen in the last one month how Nigerian
football has been brought to its knees first, through the ambition of Sani Lulu
to return to power and then through the scheming of his Man Friday, Aminu
Maigari, to mount the saddle after Lulu’s indiscretions landed him in trouble.

We have also seen how members of Nigeria’s
rugby family have refused to call truce to a battle, which has raged since 2009
when the National Sports Commission decided in its own wisdom to let interested
lovers of the sport bid for and take over its administration.

Instead of sitting down to seek ways of
revolving the disagreement, which arose when one party accused the Secretary
General of Nigeria Rugby Football Federation of influencing the handing of
concession rights to its opponents, they have lately engaged themselves in
verbal warfare.

To cap the disquiet in the sports fraternity,
officials of the Nigeria Olympic Committee, who ordinarily by virtue of their
being members of the world Olympic movement, ought to be staid and refined in
manner, have turned out to be hardly better than bickering ninnies.

At the centre of the storm are two men, Sani
Ndanusa and Habu Gumel, who if they properly sat down and reflected on their
stewardship to Nigerian sports should come to the conclusion that a quiet exit
from the scene at this point would be the fitting thing to do.

Losing
touch with reality

Both men particularly Gumel, who has sat on the
board of the Nigeria Volley Federation as president for about twelve years now,
cannot be relied upon to generate any ideas that will drive Nigerian sports
forward.

Under Gumel’s successor, Eddie Aderinokun,
volleyball thrived in Nigeria with players and officials alike freely relishing
Nigeria’s participation in local and international volleyball competitions.
Under Gumel’s watch the story has been different. Nigeria’s rating in the
global volleyball order has plummeted following its non-participation in key
international volleyball events. At the same time, competitions on the local
scene have become non-existent.

That aside, Gumel’s tenure as Director of
Sports Facilities in the Ministry of Sports witnessed the decay of sports
facilities around the country. Key national edifices like the National Stadium
in Lagos became breeding ground for criminals and haven for destitute and
prostitutes even as facilities rot away.

For many years, the facility, which used to be
the pride of Nigeria, was swamped by darkness as NEPA (now PHCP) cut power
supply owing to the refusal of the management of the facility to pay its debts
to the body. This deplorable situation existed despite the fact that the
stadium was raking in more annually from individuals, corporate organisations
and religious bodies who used its grounds for different programmes.

As for Ndanusa, who in his first term as
President of the Nigeria Tennis Federation revitalised the sport, which had
witnessed a steady decline prior to his arrival, he seemed to have lost his way
at some point along the way. His tenure as minister of sports was to put it
mildly an unmitigated disaster. The man, who upon his appointment promised not
to follow his predecessors in their blind devotion to football, became
inexorably sucked in into the vortex of football administration.

What genius these two men hope to bring to
sports administration at this stage beats the imagination. How they hope to
make an impact late in the day after squandering opportunity after opportunity
leaves one wondering whether they haven’t lost touch with reality.

It is barely a few weeks to the Commonwealth
Games in Delhi, India and Nigeria is anything but prepared. This clearly does
not figure in the calculations of Gumel and Ndanusa, who before he was fired as
sports minister this year should have supervised the preparation of the various
federations under his Supervision as minister of sports. As it turned out, he
was more interested in seeing the Super Eagles qualify for the World Cup in
South Africa.

If you ask me, Nigeria’s Olympic movement doesn’t need any
of these men. While Gumel has overstayed his welcome and should quietly retire
to contemplate other ventures, Ndanusa is too dour and lethargic to provide the
leadership needed to galvanise the Olympic to serious action.

The female national
team, the Falcons, will today, know their first round opponents at the
7th Africa Women’s Championships scheduled for South Africa between
October 29 and November 14, 2010.

To represent Nigeria at the draws is the coach of the team, Eucharia Uche, and the goalkeeper and captain, Precious Dede.

Nextsports spoke to
Uche on the eve of her departure for South Africa. She said they will
engage in some warm-up matches to get the team ready for their South
Africa challenge.

“Some friendly matches have been lined up for us in Sweden, where we have more of our foreign-based players,” she said.

After the
runners-up finish of the Falconets in Germany in August, there had been
clamours for their introduction into the senior team. Uche informed
Nextsports that there have been some inclusions.

“Already, six
members of the Falconets team that got to the final of the recently
concluded FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Germany have been drafted to
shore up the team,” she said.

The notable names
include Rebecca Kalu and Ebere Orji. The team will be returning to the
place of their last triumph, South Africa, where they won in 2006.

Nigeria was beaten
for the first time in the tournament’s history when they lost to
Equatorial Guinea in the 2008 edition hosted in Malabo. The Falcons
lost 2-1 to the host in the semi final match, but regrouped to win the
bronze medal.

The qualified teams are Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Algeria, Mali, Tanzania, and South Africa.

Champions League winner Lars Ricken looks a
proud man as he walks through Borussia Dortmund’s state-of-the-art youth
training centre.

Pitches, weight rooms and treatment facilities
abound in this complex, nestled in a leafy area of the Ruhr valley city and
dedicated to young players.

“When I was growing up I did not have access to
this,” said Ricken, one of the club greats who scored in the 1997 Champions
League final to help Borussia win the trophy. He is now the club’s youth
coordinator.

“You cannot compare this with 20 years ago,” he
told Reuters during a tour of the centre.

The academy, which includes a boarding house
for the most talented youth players, is one of 36 of its kind in Germany as all
Bundesliga and second Bundesliga clubs must have one.

They are largely responsible for producing
Germany’s dazzling and young World Cup team, who finished third in the
tournament in South Africa in July.

Nineteen of the country’s 23 World Cup players
were a product of the clubs’ youth academies and the squad’s average age was
less than 24 years and nine months.

Players such as Thomas Mueller, Mesut Ozil,
Sami Khedira, Jerome Boateng, Holger Badstuber and keeper Manuel Neuer, who are
now household names worth millions of euros, emerged from this system.

“The need to introduce a uniform obligatory
youth training system emerged after Germany’s disastrous 1998 World Cup and
Euro 2000,” Reinhard Rauball, president of the German soccer league (DFL),
which runs the top two divisions, said over a light lunch.

“We said we have to do something so that we
never have such results again.”

Licence
requirement

From July 2002 the youth academies became a
requirement for clubs wishing to obtain a licence for either of the top two
divisions.

Since then more than half a billion euros have
been poured into the system, 83 million euros last season alone.

The youth academies must follow strict
guidelines including having a specified number of floodlit pitches, teams with
a set number of players, qualified coaches and scouts. They must also have a
clearly defined philosophy.

“We play systems of 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3,” said
Ricken. “Basic attacking football and always going forward.” It is no
coincidence that this is also Germany’s favoured system.

“It is a system that is very popular and can be
morphed into any other system,” Ricken said.

Since 2002 the academies have fed clubs with
hundreds of players. Three years ago 88 Bundesliga and 56 Bundesliga 2 players
came from the academies.

This season the figures have risen to 110 and
88 respectively, representing 20 percent of all first and second division
players or one in five players.

The programme has also been an overwhelming
success for the national teams.

Every Germany under-21 player last season was a
product of the academies, and 21 players out of the 24 in the U20 team.

Transfer
money

Borussia built their new academy in 2005 with
part of the money from the transfer of David Odonkor to Spain’s Betis.

“It may be expensive but it is the right way,”
said Rauball, who as president of Borussia Dortmund is proud of his team’s
current four starting players who have emerged from the academy. Only Bayern
Munich have a higher number with six.

“It is normal that some of them will leave,”
Rauball said in reference to the 2009 U21 European champions Khedira and Ozil
who joined Real Madrid after their World Cup performances.

“German clubs may lose some of their young
players to other leagues but it is the right way to go forward in the future,”
he added, quick to point out that Borussia’s 16-year-old striker Marvin Duksch,
already a Germany international with the U15, U16 and U17 teams, could be the
next big thing.

“The sport is at the heart of things for us and
nothing else,” said DFL CEO Christian Seifert.

“This licence system is one of the biggest
inventions that German soccer has made.

“We are not focusing on what other leagues are
doing. We define our own way.”

A number of foreign leagues including Major
League Soccer (MLS) in the United States, the South African league and several
from Eastern Europe had come to Germany to learn from the system, he said.

“We are working in an industry where the end of
the road is merely that the next season is coming. We have to have in mind the
long-term effects of the decisions we take today.

“We cannot think about just the next big deal.
We have to do everything we can to keep the wheel turning for next year and the
year after and so on.” This down-to-earth approach has paid off handsomely for
Germany, which boasts the biggest average attendance in Europe, with 42,000
fans per match.

It also has the cheapest average ticket price among the top
leagues, 20 euros, and not a single club near bankruptcy despite the biggest
economic downturn in decades which has hit other major leagues much harder.

Last weekend was much awaited by
every Nigerian because of the long holidays. For tennis lovers, it was the
second week of the US open, for football fans it was the resumption of play in
the leagues after the international break, for boxing fans, it was the much
awaited fight between Wladimir Klithscko and our own Samuel Peters. Sure it was
a fantastic weekend for some and a terrible weekend for some like me.

My weekend started with Venus
Williams’s semi-final match against Kim Clijsters at the recently concluded US
Open. Venus came into the tournament not having played a single match since
Wimbledon but was always the favourite especially as her game improved as the
tournament progressed. She made it to the semis without dropping a set. She
took the lead against Clijsters, up a set, played a great second set and fell
like a pack of cards in the second set tie-break. Her first serve was
nonexistent and a series of double faults led to her demise. Though conditions
were tough, she really should have wrapped up the match in the second set. I
didn’t even bother watching the third set; it was too painful to go on.

United
unravelled at Goodison

Next stop, Manchester United away to Everton,
without Wayne Rooney. But United had a fairly decent game when they came from a
goal down to lead the home team by 3 goals to 1. Though we led, I had a bad
feeling about the match. My heart didn’t stop beating all through. You can’t
imagine how shattered I was when United conceded 2 goals in extra time to
secure just a point and leaving fans like me shattered. It is easy to console
one’s self by saying United never start well but we saw what losing against
teams like Burnley cost us last season.

Well we had a home match on Tuesday to make up
for Saturdays madness. It went from bad to worse against Rangers. The match
which ended in a draw was not only boring but ended with United losing Antonio
Valencia for the rest of the season. I always say it takes a strong character
to come back from career threatening injuries; sure Eduardo will have something
to say about it.

Federer
express derailed in New York

Just as I was trying to recover from United on
Saturday, Roger Federer sent me right back to the hole of pain and
disappointment. It was never going to be easy against a rejuvenated Novak
Djokovic on hard court but then the Fedexpress went to New York City with his
new coach Paul Annacone sending a message across that he is not ready to hang
his racquet. He showed us flashes of why he has been tagged GOAT (greatest of
all time). And did anybody see the through- the-legs-shot, a replica of last
years’ in his match against Djokovic? It isn’t often you see Federer lose match
points. That is exactly what happened in that semi-final match. Not to take
anything away from Novak, he did very well to save a couple of match points and
to come back and win the match depriving fans of a Nadal vs. Federer final at
every grand slam and of course breaking my heart yet again! Congratulations to
the eventual winner Rafa for completing a career slam after winning the US
open.

Barcelona’s
horror show

Though the EPL is the most popular league in
the world, you have to love the La Liga. I am not a Barcelona fan but a fan of
the beautiful football played by the team. With the likes of Leo Messi, David
Villa, Xavi, Iniesta and other super stars on the team, I expected nothing but
victory every time the Catalans are on the pitch of play.

Shockingly, it wasn’t the case when Barcelona
played against newly promoted Hercules on Saturday. If you thought United were
awful, ask Barca fans how they felt about their team on the day. I can’t
imagine how much people lost betting on that game. In fact Barca have Victor
Valdes to thank for keeping the score line at 0-2 with a couple of unbelievable
saves. Aside from the goal keeper, it was a poor performance by the champions.
For all the noise around Mascherano’s transfer, it is not a debut he would have
hoped for. He was quite slow and out of rhythm. I hope he settles in soon; else
Liverpool fans will have the last laugh.

For Pep Guardiola, it must have been a déjà vu because the
last time his side lost to Hercules in the Camp Nou was during the Alicante
side’s last season stay in La Liga in 1996. The visitors pulled off a 3-2 win.
Pep Guardiola scored an own goal. Bad Karma, you will have to say…

After a below
average showing against Birmingham last weekend, World Cup winner,
Fernando Torres is seeking to put things right with the trip to
arch-rivals, Manchester United. He is well informed of what it means –
the rivalry between the Reds and the Red Devils.

“It means
everything to the fans. We are the two most successful teams in England
but it has not been nice for the Liverpool fans to watch Manchester
United have so much success over the recent years.

“We have a great
squad and a great manager, and we really hope to give the fans a trophy
this season, as well as beating Manchester United for them.

“The Liverpool fans
are great, when you play well they are behind you and when you are not
playing the best they are still behind you.

“I walk my dogs
round the city, and before matches like Manchester United the fans will
tell you good luck and things like that. It’s clear how much the
Manchester United games mean to them.”

Liverpool won at
Old Trafford in 2009 when they claimed a 4-1 success and Torres
tormented the centre backs – Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand. Both
players are likely to be the centre backs today as Ferdinand continues
his return from injury.

“Nobody ever really
wins at Old Trafford and beating Manchester United 4-1 on their own
ground is practically unheard of, to this day I think that has to be
one of my favourite days wearing the Liverpool shirt,” Torres said.

A worrying
statistic is that Liverpool have won once in their last 11 away matches
and scored just eight goals in their last 14. Against a United that has
also not been firing on all cylinders, Liverpool need all their big
players like Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres to get their game going
at the Theatre of Dreams. Coach Roy Hodgson is sure the Spaniard will
come good soon.

“I’m not at all concerned about Fernando Torres. He will get better and better,” he said.

Duel of the day: Fernando Torres vs. Rio Ferdinand

Ferdinand will be
sprouting butterflies at the sight of the Spaniard as Torres can boast
that he is one of the strikers most feared by United’s defenders.

Blues host energetic Blackpool

You will have to go
back to 1971 for the last time these two teams met but Carlo Ancelotti
and his boys will have no fears of Blackpool after scoring 21 goals in
five matches. The Blues have another chance to score a lot of goals
when they host maverick coach, Ian Holloway and his boys. Despite
putting up a credible performance in their away match against Arsenal,
Blackpool lost 4-0. The odds may not have reduced on their being
relegated at the end of the season, but Blackpool have surprisingly won
two away matches; 4-0 against Wigan and 2-0 against Newcastle. They
will be hoping for a miracle as they meet Chelsea.

Frank Lampard,
Didier Drogba and Ashley Cole should return for the reigning champions
who scored 103 goals last season. Four-goal hero, Florent Malouda said
their ability to score throughout the team is one reason for their
success.

“I think that’s our
strength, we play a system where everybody knows what he has to do and
players come in and out and the result is still the same. Everybody can
score and it is difficult for the opponents. We’re playing good
football but every game is different and at the end we made scoring
look easy but we just try to start each game playing well first and
look for an opportunity. That’s what we did.”

Holloway will hope that Chelsea do not start well

Mancini needs a victory

The distraction of
the Europa Cup is out of the way for Roberto Mancini and now it is back
to the Premiership for the blue half of Manchester. Mancini will be
happy that David Silva has scored his first goal for the club but he
must be very wary of the yo-yo side of the English game. Roberto
Martinez seems to be able to inspire his side one day and depress them
the other.

Carlos Tevez and Jo
will hope it is the bad side of Wigan as the Argentine has scored five
goals in his last six matches the Lactics. No one knows exactly the
Wigan side that will show up at the JJB Stadium but Martinez will be
hoping that it is the side that beat Tottenham that will show.

Also Wigan have a good home record against City in the Barclays Premier League but Mancini’s backers will be expecting a win.

Barca in showdown with Atletico

The Vicente Calderon Stadium will be a seething cauldron this weekend as Barcelona visit Atletico Madrid.

The only game Barca
lost last season was against Los Colchoneros but this game has a
different set of dimensions. Atletico are hoping that this is the
season where they finally come good in the La Liga but Barcelona will
not be easy meat for the Europa Cup champions. There could not have a
more different warm-up than Barcelona’s thumping of Panathinaikos 5-1
and the 0-1 defeat that Forlan and company suffered against Aris
Salonika in Greece.

No other Barcelona
player espouses the Catalan philosophy and knows as much about the
opposition than Andres Iniesta. “Last season it was the only game we
lost. They are an opponent who is historically uncomfortable for us and
we will have to try to do things well to have a chance of breaking this
bad run.

“It’s important not
to give them any chances. They have great players and are in good form.
Currently they are one of the best teams in Europe.” Atletico may have
to do without habitual Barcelona tormentor, Sergio Aguero, who is
doubtful with a leg injury.

Quique Sánchez Flores has gotten the Madrid team together and are
top of the league with a maximum six points while Barca are in eighth
position but it is still early to know the outcome of the season.

Heartland FC of
Owerri were yesterday forced to a 1-1 draw by visiting JSK Kabiyle in
their last game of the CAF Champions League competition.

The draw caps a disappointing campaign for the Naze Millionaires who could only manage a victory in six games.

The team, which is
been handled by the duo of Samson Siasia and Emeka Ezeugo had struggled
all through the campaign as they failed to re-enact the form, which saw
it get into the finals of the competition last season.

Even though their
place was already confirmed in the semi finals JSK’s confirmed their
supremacy in Group B; amassing fourteen points in the process.

Meanwhile,
Esperance of Tunisia booked a semifinals meeting with Egyptian giants
Al Ahly after a 1-0 win over Dynamos in Zimbabwe on Saturday.

The Tunisians
finish top of Group A, and with the top two positions in Group B
already decided ahead of Sunday’s final round of fixtures, it means
Esperance take on the Red Devils in the Last 4 which start in a
fortnight.

The other semi will see defending champions TP Mazembe player JS Kabylie from Algeria.

Oussama Darragi
continued his fine recent form to fire Esperance to victory at the
Rufaro Stadium on Saturday with a goal midway through the first period.

In the day’s other Group A encounter, Mazembe were held to a 0-0 draw by ES Setif of Algeria.