By Patrick Omorodion
The city of Kano will be agog today as the state football team, Kano Pillars, Nigeria’s flag  bearers in the 2009 Africa Champions League aim to topple Al Hilal Omdurman of Sudan in the fourth leg of the group stage of the competition.

Al Hilal lead the group with 7 points after three rounds of matches with Pillars falling 2-0 to them when both sides met in Sudan two weeks ago, a loss that kept the Nigerian side on 4 points, same with Zesco Untied of Zambia.

A win for the homers will put them on same points with the Sudanese who have a better goals advantage of plus three to Pillars’ zero, but if Pillars win 2-0, they will shoot to the top of the group.

This however depends on the result of the second match in Zambia between Zesco and the other Sudanese team, Al-Merreikh who lie at the bottom of the group with one point from three matches.

Both Zesco and Pillars have zero goals difference and the side that wins with a wider margin today will take the lead ahead of the next round of matches on the weekend of Setember 11-13 when Pillars will incidentally play their second consecutive home match against Zesco.

Nigeria’s other representative, Heartland Football Club of Owerri were expected to play a late night match against Etoile du Sahel of Tunisia in Sousse yesterday. They are tied at the top on six points with TP Mazembe of DR Congo who host Zimbabwe’s Monomotapa.|

Heartland who won the Super League decided in Ilorin last week were 3-0 better than the Tunisians two weeks ago in Owerri and if they are able to escape with a draw in Sousse, they could lead Group B on the ground that TP Mazembe lose to Monomotapa who were humbled 5-0 by the Congolese a fortnight ago.