By Kei Emmanuel Duku<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a0The head coaches of Al-Merrikh FC and Al-Hilal FC Omdurman from Sudan have praised the quality of the artificial turf at Juba Stadium, calling it a “modern turf generational” stadium.<\/strong><\/p>\n Both teams are playing their home matches in Juba due to the ongoing civil war in Sudan, which has prevented them from hosting international matches.<\/p>\n Al-Merrikh FC’s head coach, Giovanni Salinas, expressed his satisfaction with the Juba Stadium pitch after his team’s 2:0 aggregate victory against Al-Nasr of Libya in the second league of the CAF Champions League.<\/p>\n He contrasted it with the low-quality pitches they encountered during their pre-season training in Nigeria and Libya.<\/p>\n “We had a difficult pre-season training in West Africa,” Salinas said. “The pitch there was very bad, and it caused injuries to some of our players. In Libya, some fields were good, but others were not. We struggled with many problems.”<\/p>\n Salinas noted that the good conditions at Juba Stadium have helped his players adapt quickly and perform well.<\/p>\n “We found good conditions here, and the stadium is very nice in terms of turf generation,” he said. “It has a good impact on the players’ fitness, and we feel at home.”<\/p>\n Jean Florent Ikwange Ibenge, the head coach of Al-Hilal FC, also praised Juba Stadium.<\/p>\n He credited the passionate support of South Sudanese fans for his team’s 2:1 aggregate victory against Al-Ahly-Benghazi in the return leg of the first preliminary round of the CAF Champions League.<\/p>\n “Without them (fans), we would have lost,” Ibenge said. “After more than a year without playing football and playing outside Sudan, the reception accorded to my team made us feel like we haven’t missed our home fans.”<\/p>\n Juba Stadium is one of 54 stadiums in Africa approved by CAF to host the second round of the Confederations Cup and Champions League.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Kei Emmanuel Duku \u00a0The head coaches of Al-Merrikh FC and Al-Hilal FC Omdurman from Sudan have praised the quality of the artificial turf at Juba Stadium, calling it a “modern turf generational” stadium. Both teams are playing their home matches in Juba due to the ongoing civil war[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news","category-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Jean-Florent-Ikwange-Ibenge-Al-Hilal-FC-Head-Coach-on-the-left-together-with-his-first-Assistant-Coach-speaking-to-media-after-their-win-against-Al-Ahly-FC-in-Juba.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28111,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28109\/revisions\/28111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}