Niger Tornadoes will travel to Conakry, Guinea for the CAF Confederation Cup preliminary round, return leg tie against Santoba without their influential defender Collins Nwaeze who is currently injured.
The 2019 Aiteo Cup finalists lost the first leg 2-1 in front of their fans at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium, Kaduna and they need a complete turnaround to stage a comeback in the return leg. The head coach of Tornadoes, Abubakar Bala told DaSportstainment247.com that Nwaeze is not in his programme for the return leg tie after the player sustained a knee injury that indicated that he won’t be part of the build-up for the second leg tie.
He confirmed that they would be leaving for Conakry with 18 players and they would certainly miss the services of Nwaeze but that they have a capable replacement for the defender.
“We have almost an injury-free squad to pick from besides Collins Nwaeze who got injured,” Bala told DaSportsTainment247.com. “He hurt his knee and has not started serious training. He is not part of the team to Lagos and neither will be travel with us to Conakry.
“He is among our reliable players but we can’t call on him for the game in Guinea. We must look to other players’ direction to ensure that we secure the result that will take us to the next stage in Conakry irrespective of what we face there.”
