Minnows Ethiopians are expressing a huge confidence of beating African champions Nigeria in the World Cup qualifiers playoff to reach the World Cup 2014 for the first time of their history.
Ethiopia, one of the co-founders of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), have never gone that far in the qualifiers and are set to face a star-studded Nigerian squad that claimed the African title at the beginning of the year.
"Nigeria are a good side. We played them at the Nations Cup in Africa and they defeated us. But we fought on that day. We know them and are confident that we are going to defeat them to qualify for our first World Cup," Ethiopian striker Menyahil Teshome told Addis Guday, an Amharic magazine.
"We are counting on our fans to help us achieve this objective. In fact, we are already seeing beyond Nigeria. It is the World Cup we are preparing for, where we hope to play against Spain and Argentina on the field. We believe that our dream will be realized", he concluded.
Ethiopia will host Nigeria on Sunday 13 October and the return leg is set to be played a month later in Nigeria.
The Nigerians were also very happy to be paired with Ethiopia.
"I actually think we couldn't have had a better draw. We got the lowest ranked team in the draw. They are number 25 in Africa and 93 in the world, and we getting to play the first leg away from home. It is really the best we could have got out of the draw," Secretary general of the Nigeria football federation Musa Amadu said after the playoffs draw held on 16 September in Cairo.
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