Head coach of Liberia’s senior national team Peter Butler hopes his side will be competitive when they face the Super Eagles of Nigeria in Saturday’s Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifying match.
The Lone Star of Liberia are bottom of Group C and virtually eliminated from the race to finish as group winners with two games left to play in this International window.
Butler, 55, says his team’s main objective against Nigeria in the game billed for the Stade Ibn Batouta on Saturday is to play for pride and try to be competitive against their more illustrious West Africans.
“The most important thing from our perspective is that you’re playing for pride and you’re playing for your country. We still have points to play for and we have a lot of respect for the Nigerian team but we will be competitive as we have been in every single game we’ve played,” Butler told the Media in Tanger on Thursday.
“We are coming into it with a positive mindset to come and be competitive and try to win a football match against a very very talented team that I have a great respect for.”
Liberia will play their final two matches in their adopted home ground in the beautiful city of Tanger, Morocco. Their previous home game during the qualifying series was staged in Accra, Ghana.
Butler believes that their inability to play matches in Liberia (due to facility issues) was a key reason in their failure during this qualifying campaign.
“If we play at home, we have great chances of winning matches. We play away from home, you got to take in the travel aspect, it took us two days to get here (Morocco) so it does have effect on us. If Nigeria were to play all their games away from home, they’d be struggling as well,” he said.
Liberia’s game against Nigeria will kick-off at 5pm Nigerian time on Saturday with Tunisian Youssef Essrayri the centre referee.
