Angola hope to ride a tide of fervent home support when they bid on Sunday to reach the African Nations Cup semifinals for the first time.
The hosts play Ghana in Luanda (kick off 4pm GMT) in the first of four quarterfinals scheduled over the next two days.
Favourites Côte d’Ivoire take on Algeria (7.30pm) in Sunday’s later game in Cabinda.
A capacity 50 000 crowd is set to watch Angola try to take advantage of Ghana’s injury woes and improve on their best Nations Cup of two years ago when they reached the last eight.
Angola’s top scorer in the tournament Flavio is back from a hamstring injury while Ghana are without Michael Essien, who missed their last match and has been ruled out of the tournament by a knee injury the midfielder suffered in training.
Ghana had already lost several key players through injury before heading to the tournament.
But Angola’s Portuguese coach Manuel Jose told a pre-match news conference on Saturday that Ghana’s young side were still more experienced than his team.
Meanwhile, Didier Drogba leads the Côte d’Ivoire in their bid to reach the semifinals for the third time in a row.
Coach Vahid Halilhodzic said this year’s tournament was their best chance of success after they lost in the 2006 final and suffering a surprise semifinal defeat two years ago.
“This generation will be playing for high stakes in the coming week. We lose all or we win all. It’s money time,” he said on Saturday.
But he also warned of the potential of Algeria, who sprang a surprise by beating African champions Egypt last November in a play-off to reach this year’s World Cup finals in South Africa.
The other Nations Cup quarterfinal ties will be played on Monday when Egypt meet Cameroon in Benguela and Nigeria take on surprise package Zambia in Lubango. – Reuters