Nania not afraid of big names in Africa

Following their making history, Nania FC want more glory.

After claiming the scalp of the nation’s champion club in the semi finals and completely outplaying, outclassing and outscoring the country’s greatest ever club in the final to win Ghana’s FA Cup, Nania FC have vowed to extend their football skills unto the continental stage.

The side owned, managed and financed by football legend Abedi Pele did the unthinkable on Sunday by beating giants Asante Kotoko 1-0 after extra time to lift the re-launched MTN FA Cup, with Pele himself coaching from the touchline.

But George Lomotey, Team Manager of Nania tells ALL SPORTS the Division One League side are not finished yet saying they are up and fired up to take on the giants of African football when they compete in the 2012 CAF Confederations Cup, a competition they have qualified for courtesy Sunday’s victory over Kotoko.

He also rules out suggestions that Nania will recruit experienced players to beef the team for the Africa campaign.

“By all means we will be in Africa and we are not afraid of any so-called giants. Kotoko have beaten plenty of them before. We don’t need any experience to beat them.

“We beat the champions (Berekum Chelsea) in the semi finals before beating the grand old papa (Kotoko) so we will just take our football to Africa and let’s see,” Lomotey told us on the morning after.

Nania became the first team playing outside the top tier league to triumph in the domestic Cup competition which began way back in 1958. Asante Kotoko were the first ever winners those 53 years ago and were also defending champions going into Sunday’s final, having won the previous competition ten years ago.

But the giant killers in Nania defied the odds to stage perhaps the biggest upset in domestic Ghanaian football history to beat Kotoko and take home the giant MTN FA Cup. Now, Lomotey says, Nania will just continue to enjoy their football no matter the league division or competition in which they find themselves.

“The boys and everybody is happy, you can’t take it away from them. To beat Kotoko after going through the whole 90 minutes and extra time, it shows we worked hard for what was a very difficult win.

“If maybe we had got an early goal and then defended then someone could say it was fluke. We are happy and we will continue to play good football because good football wins matches,” George Lomotey said. *Credit: Prince Dornu-Leiku / ALL SPORTS Newspaper*