Rangers Needed Penalties To Get Past Sobemap

Sports

Lome · Saturday 12 September 2026

Rangers are into the second preliminary round of the CAF Champions League after beating Sobemap FC 5-4 on penalties at the Stade de Kegue in Lome on Friday. Both legs finished 1-1. Fidelis Ilechukwu's side now face MC Alger of Algeria.

Nigeria's champions did not win a single match in the tie.

football penalty spot goalkeeper floodlights Photograph by Jonathan Petersson via Unsplash.

The scoreline is the diagnosis

Sobemap are not a side the NPFL champions should need 240 minutes and a shootout to get past. Rangers led in the second leg through an own goal inside the first half hour and were pegged back with 25 minutes to play, which is the same pattern as the first leg and the same pattern as most Nigerian club football away from home.

Why away legs keep going like this. NPFL sides travel late, often on connecting flights, into humidity and pitches they have not trained on, with squads assembled on domestic budgets. The gap between a Nigerian champion and a mid-table West African club is smaller than the league table at home suggests, and it closes further once you leave.

What MC Alger changes

Sobemap	MC Alger
A Beninese league side	One of Algeria's biggest clubs
Comparable budget	Continental regulars with a full-time structure
Survivable on penalties	Will not need penalties

The North African round is where NPFL campaigns usually end.

Getting through is worth something. Needing a shootout to do it tells you what the next round will look like.

The bit nobody funds

Nigerian clubs qualify for this competition every year and exit it early nearly every year, and the reasons are always the same set of logistics and money rather than talent. A domestic champion that reached the group stage would earn continental prize money that would transform its season. That is precisely why the preliminary rounds, the cheap ones to prepare for properly, keep costing more than they should.

Reporting: Complete Sports, Africa Top Sports, Score Nigeria and Naija News.

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