{"id":15564,"date":"2024-02-05T13:02:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T13:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/afcon-obi-mikel-predicts-two-countries-to-play-final\/"},"modified":"2024-02-05T13:02:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T13:02:41","slug":"afcon-obi-mikel-predicts-two-countries-to-play-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/afcon-obi-mikel-predicts-two-countries-to-play-final\/","title":{"rendered":"AFCON: Obi Mikel predicts two countries to play final"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Former Super Eagles captain and Chelsea midfielder, John Obi Mikel has predicted the two nations to play the final of the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mikel, the final showdown would be between Ivory Coast and Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>Ivory Coast defeated Mali 2-1 while the Super Eagles beat Angola to book their places in the last four of the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria is set to face South Africa in the first semifinal on Wednesday evening while Ivory Coast have a clash with Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n<p>Mikel\u2019s prediction means that the two teams would be meeting for the second time in the tournament having previously battled each other in the group stage.<\/p>\n<p>Jose Peseiro\u2019s side beat the Elephants by a solitary goal.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on The Obi One podcast, Obi was asked whether it will be a Ivory Coast against Nigeria final, he said, \u201cI think so. I was thinking about it the the other day and I was thinking that we managed to beat them in the group stage and they were on the verge of leaving, the tournament and all of a sudden you know, they are back in it and now.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have got a wind with them and now are playing prettily okay but not so well, but they have started to win games and now if they can manage to get to the final, who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>AFCON: Obi Mikel predicts two countries to play final<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Super Eagles captain and Chelsea midfielder, John Obi Mikel has predicted the two nations to play the final of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103,15,9380,160],"tags":[110,2095,180,794,201],"class_list":["post-15564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afcon","category-news","category-obi-mikel","category-sport","tag-afcon","tag-mikel","tag-news","tag-obi","tag-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigerdeltanews.ng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}