Head Coach Of Abakaliki FC Ifeanyi Onyedika has admitted that he never believed his team will reach this year’s President Federation Cup.
Abakaliki were the giant killers of this year’s edition despite just coming into existence in 2024.
After a pulsating 90 minutes of football which ended 0-0, Abakaliki saw their giants killing streak come to an end after losing 4-3 to Kwara United on penalty shootout.
Speaking to journalists after the final, Onyedika stated that hardwork was the key to his team’s brilliant run to the final.
“I never expected my team to go this far in this competition but what we did right was that we worked very hard,” the 1980 AFCON winner said in his chat with journalists.
“We worked very hard for this game and we know Kwara, once they do whatever they do in the first half it’s over, we can take them in the second half so we were prepared for that, unfortunately, we had some problem with our striker who had an injury and stayed too long on the pitch.
“We are not happy at all but it’s okay, we will move on from here and see where it takes us.”
On how he will rate his team’s performance for last season, Onyedika said he will give them a pass mark.
“I will rate our season a relative success because in Ebonyi State this is the height of progress in sport, they’ve never had anything close to this.
On what went wrong in the Nigeria National (NNL) last season:”Obviously, we were not fantastic enough and NNL is a different ball game and things kept slipping through our fingers and sorry to say this some officials are horrible.”
But he assured that his team will gain promotion back to the NNL.
He added:”In the NLO, I’m sure we will do very well If we have this team we will play ourself out of there, I’m sure of it because we have the players who can do it.”
By James Agberebi
