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Key points ahead of Liberia – Nigeria World Cup qualifying match

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BY KUNLE SOLAJA.

Liberia will be hosting Nigeria in Tangier, Morocco in the matchday 5 of Group C of the African qualifying series for the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.

While Nigeria will be seeking to consolidate on their leadership of the group, Liberia will be attempting to redeem their image, being the bottom-placed team of the four-squad group.

There are key points to be noted ahead of the encounter.

  • Both teams met for the first time on 8 October 1963, the 14th anniversary of Nigeria’s first international match (versus Sierra Leone in 1949)
  • Apart from the exhibition match played in 2018 in which President George Weah featured, this will be the 19th encounter of both countries across all competitions and friendly duels.
  • The pendulum is in Nigeria’s favour, having won 11 of the previous 18 matches, drawing three and losing four.
  • The match will be Nigeria’s 109th World Cup qualification match, the highest by any African country.
  • Nigeria has beaten Liberia in only once in an away competitive match. That was the 1-0 win in a World Cup qualifier on 4 November 1984. Clement Temile scored the only goal.
  • If fielded, Ahmed Musa will win his 102nd cap for Nigeria, surpassing the record 101 by Vincent Enyeama.
  • If Nigeria wins and Cape Verde drops points in the encounter with Central African Republic being played on the same day, Nigeria will pick the ticket for the World Cup play-off making it the second time the country will pick a ticket in the coastal city of Tangier, having picked the ticket for the 1976 Olympics from the same city.
  • The trio of Maduka Okoye, Kenneth Omeruo and Frank Onyeka will miss Tuesday’s match with Cape Verde in Lagos if they get cautioned in the match against Liberia.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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