C/League: Victorious Enyimba crashes out beat Al Merreikh 2-1
Champions League campaigners Enyimba managed to pull a 2-1 victory over Al Merreikh of Sudan at the Aba Township stadium Wednesday, but the victory was not enough to see the two time Champions league winners into the group stage of the championship.
The Aba landlords according to some analysts lost the encounter in the first leg after a 3-0 defeat away. Many had opined that it would have been easy for the Peoples Elephant to turn the table if they had lost with a slimmer margin like a lone goal noting that it will be a herculean task to ride high with such deficit.
Interestingly the visitors equally opened scoring in Aba leaving their hosts to come from behind to equalise and then convert penalty to earn a 2-1 victory while Al Merreikh advance on a 4-2 on aggregate.
Saif Terry the danger man of Al Merreikh who grabbed a hat-trick in the first game in Sudan, opened scoring in Aba after just seven minutes of action.
Victor Mbaoma drew Enyimba level seven minutes later thus raising hope that a possible turn around could be achieved but the game dragged on till the 51st when he again converted a penalty after Samad Kadiri was tripped inside the box.
The remaining minutes of the game saw Enyimba intensify attack with intent to consolidating but that came to nothing.
The team will now drop to the second tier the CAF Confederation Cup where they will be awaiting an opponent for the playoffs.
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The team captured the event of the day in a short submission on twitter @EnyimbaFC saying “A win today but not enough to see us through to the group stage”
Enyimba posted their best performance in the Champions about 18 years ago when they won the championship back to back 2003 and 2004.