Four-star Merreikh too much for Sony Ela Nguema

Sudanese giants, El Merreikh booked their place at the next round in grand style after a 4-1 drubbing of Sony Ela Nguema of Equatorial Guinea in their Preliminary Round second leg clash on Saturday in Omdurman.

Ahmed Abdalla scored in either half before one each from Bakri Babeker and Nigerian Kunle Odunlami secured a 5-1 aggregate win for ‘Al Zaeem’.

It took 23 minutes for Merreikh to break the deadlock courtesy Babiker before Odunlami’s header six minutes later gave them a 2-0 lead.

On the half-hour mark, Abdalla increased by heading home to give the host a 3-0 lead at half time.

Abdallah completed his brace four minutes past the hour mark to take the game beyond the visitors who grabbed a consolation courtesy Camara Zanga five minutes from time.

Merreikh will now face either Rivers United of Nigeria or AS Real of Mali at the 1/16th round.

Reactions

Diego Garzitto (Head Coach, El Merreikh)

I talked a lot at my press conference on Friday about the physical and tactical condition of El Merreikh, and I was correct in many points. As you saw from the game today, we are not ready physically. Nevertheless, the team played an excellent 60 minutes. We made some substitutions because of an injury to Mohammad 'Takat' Hashim, but were not changes within the requirements; it was necessary and compelling.

The result was good, but we have to work on our physical and tactical aspect of our game.

We will be playing about 10 games in a month, and we have to ready.

The main objective was to qualify, and we did it more than wonderful. I’m not happy though how we ended