Zinedine Zidane believes Real Madrid is being underrated ahead of the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool on Tuesday.

Madrid has endured a patchy season but remains alive in the Champions League and La Liga, with the gap to Atletico Madrid down to three points with nine games left.

And if they can overcome Liverpool, they will have a semi-final to come against either Chelsea or Porto and be within sight of a 14th European triumph.

“I think my team has been underestimated,” said Zidane in a press conference on Monday. “I trust my team a lot and I know what it can give. But we can’t change what people think. We can only work day by day and while there is still a chance, we never give up.

“We are going to fight for everything. We have had difficult moments this season and now we are better but it doesn’t mean anything tomorrow.”

Zidane raised the possibility of Eden Hazard being involved in the first leg in Madrid on Tuesday, even though the Belgian has missed the last three weeks with a pelvic injury. Hazard trained at Valdebebas on Monday morning.

“We have talked a lot about this, Hazard has to be calm. The important thing is that he has recovered,” said Zidane. “If the player is well, I want him with the team. We are going to do things little by little and we’ll see what happens.”

Madrid will be without their captain Sergio Ramos, who injured his calf on international duty last month with Spain.

Ramos played a key role as Real Madrid beat Liverpool in the Champions League final in 2018 after his challenge forced Mohamed Salah to be substituted in the first half.

“I know Sergio, he is a teammate, a friend,” said Madrid defender Nacho Fernandez. “It’s a shame, nobody likes to be injured in moments as important as this and even more so when you know Sergio, who is the captain.

“I’m sure that not just Salah but everyone from Liverpool will want to take revenge and win the game, just like us.”

Liverpool bounced back from their defeat in Kiev by winning the Champions League and Premier League over the next two seasons but, like Madrid, they have wavered since, falling behind Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

“We don’t think about the past,” said Zidane. “It’s a big game for them and it’s a different game from the final in Kiev. We’re preparing for a different game.”

“We are at a club where every day, every minute we live with pressure,” added Nacho. “We know how to handle it, we try to use it in the best possible way, which is to lift a trophy at the end of the season.”

Many talented and brilliant Nigerians have had their promising future ruined by their desperation to seek greener pastures abroad. Some of them who quit thriving jobs at home end up doing menial jobs abroad with several others becoming fugitives in the long run, GBENGA ADERANTI reports/ THE NATION

Henry was a top insurance broker in Nigeria before he migrated to the United Kingdom (UK) for greener pastures on the crest of Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) visa. As a top flight insurance broker, he had everything going for him—decent accommodation, fairly good car, reward for good performance and opportunity to rise to higher positions in his organisation. But all that, for the young man, was inadequate.

He had read about how well insurance brokers are paid abroad and imagined how his life would change if he travelled out and earn a salary which when converted to naira would turn him into an instant millionaire. To actualise his dream, he quit his job and left for the UK with a promise to people he left behind that he would soon begin to send cars and hard currency to them.

On getting g to the UK, he tried his best to secure a job similar to the one he was doing in Nigeria but he could not get any. He found himself sweating in the cold temperature of the UK as he found himself unfit for the system. In the end, a friend got him a job as a security officer with a small private firm. Unfortunately, the pay was not enough for him to renew his HSMP visa even though it was better than what he earned in Nigeria.

In the end, the Home Office (HO) gave him 72 hours to leave the UK. But rather than comply, he simply changed his residential address and carried on with his job without informing his employer about the change in his staying status.

A friend to Henry said: “The HO Police went to the office of the security company where he worked after a deportation order was issued and a call was made to him to report in the office immediately. But someone in the office tipped him off about the presence of the police, so he managed to escape deportation.

“He was lucky to be off duty at the time the police visited. Otherwise, he would have been arrested and deported after serving a jail term for working without permit. His predicament has since caused him to go underground, looking for menial jobs and begging for charity.”

Yet as far as the young Nigerian was concerned, it was better to remain a wanderer in the UK than return to Nigeria empty handed to be taunted by friends and relations.

Like Henry, Bukky, an experienced nurse in a government owned hospital in Lagos, also quit her job to travel to the UK on the HSMP visa obtained with the help of a relative who qualified in the UK as a medical doctor.

As a nurse, she had read and heard how much her services would be needed and rewarded abroad. Without wasting time, she saved enough money and obtained a working visa. With the HSMP visa conditions, she was tied to four year visa with her employer – at Camberwell.

A friend of hers said: “In order to change her visa to permanent stay without restrictions, she needed to prove to the Home Office that she’s now ‘settled’ in the UK. As a result, she travelled back to Nigeria to arrange a marriage with an old boyfriend. All the expenses were borne by her.

“She subsequently obtained a visa for the ‘hubby’ and both of them travel to the UK, but the man could not get a job immediately. At a point the man became bored and started having affairs all over the place, flirting and visiting so many dating sites.

“Of course, their marriage crumbled, only for Bukky to realise that the husband actually had another wife and a child in Nigeria to whom he had been sending money to regularly from Bukky’s bank account.

“Bukky literally went ‘mental’. She lost her pregnancy and has not been herself since. She’s now recovering in a psychiatric home while the whereabouts of the husband is unknown.

“The only good thing is that the Home Office has allowed her to stay in the UK permanently without any restrictions, and she is now waiting to become a full UK citizen. Will she ever go back to Nigeria? I doubt that very much. Not for another husband anyway.”

Bukky’s friend also shared the story of two Nigerian ladies who travelled to the UK on six-month tourist visas that could not be renewed.

She said: “Many Nigerians allow their tourist visas to expire without leaving the UK. And knowing that without their old passport the Nigerian Embassy in the UK, by law, cannot issue them ETC (emergency travelling certificate), they burn their passports and clone the identities of legal UK residents that they know. As things stand, many of them may not be able to visit their home country again.

“But the most tragic thing is that many of them are suffering and are at the mercy of other Nigerians in the Diaspora who have turned them into slaves of sorts. This is the story many Nigerians abroad would not tell their family members at home. To compound their problems, some embassies and high commission offices are not making things easy.”

In a viral video, the Nigerian High Commission in Atlanta Georgia, United States, was fingered as one of the places the issue of documentation and passport renewal are made difficult.

In the video, a Nigerian who was frustrated about the hurdles placed in the ways of Nigerians who want to renew their passports described the situation at the high commission as “chaotic”.

According to the man that speaks in the background of the video, the staff at the Nigerian High Commission, aside from collecting the passport application fee, would make Nigerians pay another 130 dollars.

“Nigerians have to stay in the sun outside the embassy disorganised dishevel, leave their homes, travel by flight and sleep in hotels. (They) spend about 1,500 dollars for this trip just because they want to renew their passports,” he said.

In comparison, he said, the citizens of a country like the Republic of Benin do not have to travel but only mail their passports.

“We must stop this. It is a fraud. Defrauding Nigerians in the name of ‘there is no money’ to run the embassy. Where has Nigeria’s money gone to? What happened to the budget?” he queried.

For many Nigerians who are living abroad illegally, returning home to settle down or visit family members could be a pipe dream. According to an immigration lawyer, the problem with most immigrants, especially those with multiple entry visas, starts when they want to work in the UK.

According to him, the visa confers on them the status of visitors who are not allowed to work. “Most Nigerian immigrants adopt other people’s names and use the documents of genuine citizens who are allowed to work. In most cases, when such a visitor is caught, the penalty is always grave. Unfortunately, most Nigerians who come as visitors always have it at the back of their minds to work in the UK.”

According to him, it is a bit better for those with multiple visas. But it is also a big risk. Most of them would come in, work and use the proceeds of their work to buy goods. He said what they normally do is to extend the visa for two or three years and they would start working.

“After a while, they go to the home office and change their status from being a visitor to that of a trader or a business person. But it is a big risk, because in the process of trying to gather money, nothing must go wrong. For those of them that managed to escape immigration, it is always neither here nor there because they would not want to come back to Nigeria because of the fear of being caught by the immigration at the airport.”

A Nigerian with dual citizenship who lives in the United Kingdom told The Nation that some Nigerians who are stranded in the country are sometimes assisted by people like him. But he said it could spell a disaster if they are caught.

He said: “If stranded Nigerians want to go out of the country (UK), what they normally do is to look for someone with both the Nigerian and the United Kingdom passports. The one with the UK and the Nigerian citizenship will buy the ticket in his own name, pretending that he is travelling to Nigeria, check in, collect the boarding pass or even travel together.

“The only snag is that you can’t use such in two places because the gate the foreigner will pass through is different from the gate the UK citizen would pass through. But as soon as the Nigerian gets to the airport, he would send the passport back to the UK.

“This costs a lot of money and it is a big racket here. They charge as much as £2,000. But if caught, the owner of such a passport could also go to jail. Though very risky, that is the only way those that had been stranded get out of the UK.

“Although using another person’s passport may be difficult, some who are not eligible to work also change their identity by using another person’s document to work. But this has its own challenge too as the salary or the wage is paid into the account of the owner of the identity. The real owner deducts his own commission at source and gives whatever they agreed on to the borrower of his identity.

“This has its own problem too because the owner of the identity could decide to be dubious. He may decide not to pay a dime to the person using his identity, knowing full well that the person would not be able to report.”

Speaking to The Nation, Susan, who has lived in the United Kingdom for six years, said she came to the country with a student visa. But after finishing her studies, she decided to stay and work and has been using another person’s identity. Suzan said: “I was employed by a Nigerian agent to work as a caregiver. Most times when it is time to pay, the owner of the agency, a woman, would have one reason or the other not to pay. She would tell you that if you are aggrieved, you may report to the police. It sucks. What can you do?”

Suzan said if she would be able to get a job in Nigeria where she would be able to earn N500,000 a month, she would definitely return home.

There is also the case of one Peter who travelled to the United Kingdom. At a point that things were getting difficult for him, he approached his friend who gave him his driver’s licence which he used to apply for a job in a supermarket.

He said: “It was my friend that applied for the job for me. He gave me his driver’s licence but warned me sternly that if I was caught he would deny me and tell the police that I stole his identity. He warned me not to use his identity to borrow from a bank or get into debt.”

Peter was lucky for two years, using his friend’s identity to work without paying a dime to the owner of the identity. He applied for asylum and for more than two years, he kept appealing. He had his documents in the home office and was eventually granted an asylum.

“I was just lucky. It is always sweet when you are not caught. I couldn’t see my family during that period because if I made any attempt to come to Nigeria, they would not allow me to return to the UK. It was traumatic.

But using another person’s identity brings a lot of trouble. A Nigerian living in Texas, Dele Peters, told The Nation how a Nigerian was caught using the identity of a dead person. The real owner of the identity is in Texas while the person that assumes the new identity lives in Ohio. “Unfortunately, the owner of the identity who lived in Texas died. But the one with a fake identity kept using the document of the dead person even when she knew that the owner of the identity was dead.

“Unfortunately, this country is wired. They knew that the real owner was dead but he was still paying tax. Everybody pays tax. So, if you work, your employer remits taxes on your behalf to the federal, state and county. That the name was dead in Texas and yet a company was remitting taxes on her behalf was a red flag.

By Abankula/ PM NEWS

Almost three weeks after Nigerian doctorate student, Najeebat Sule was shot dead in Philadelphia, United States, the police remain clueless about the gunman.

No arrest has been made as the gunman remains at large.

By Gowon Akpodonor/ GUARDIAN.NG

• Team Makes First Sea Voyage Since 1949
• Ahmed Musa, Gernot Rohr Speak

After two-hour voyage on the sea, players and officials of the Super Eagles landed in Porto Novo yesterday with a vow to cripple their host, Squirrels of Benin Republic in today’s games of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier. The trip to Porto Novo through waterway from Lekki was the first time for the Super Eagles since their maiden predecessors, the famed UK Tourists, made a journey by sea from Lagos to Liverpool in August 1949.

The Nigerian contingent hit Porto Novo Jetty with much buzz, glitz and glitter yesterday afternoon in six boats.

Nigeria’s ambassador to Benin Republic, His Excellency Ambassador Olawale Awe, led mission staff to await the delegation and then accompanied the team and its officials to the Golden Tulip Hotel in Cotonou. The Super Eagles will ride by bus to Porto Novo this morning and return to the Golden Tulip after their clash with the Squirrels at the Stade Charles de Gaulle.

With three–pointer, Sierra Leone, scheduled to commence hostilities with bottom–placed Lesotho at 3pm GMT today, it means the match in southern Africa would have ended before Nigeria and Benin due to kick off at 6pm GMT. A draw in Maseru will ensure the Super Eagles are through to the finals in Cameroon.

However, the Eagles have vowed to cripple their host so as to make it a double over the Squirrels.

Team Captain Ahmed Musa said: “We are not looking at what happens in Lesotho. It is not necessary for us to bother ourselves with what they play. Our focus is to get the three points here in Porto Novo and wrap up qualification. Three points will get us to Cameroon no matter what anyone plays, and that is what we are determined to get.”

In November 2019, the Squirrels shocked the Eagles with a goal inside the first five minutes at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo, before goals by Victor Osimhen and Samuel Kalu earned the Eagles all three points. The Eagles followed up with a 4-2 defeat of Lesotho in Maseru four days later to fly to the top of the pool, but drew in their home-and-away duels with Sierra Leone last year.

Technical Adviser Gernot Rohr said rediscovering winning mentality is important for the Eagles before going into the FIFA World Cup qualifying battles.

“I am keen for the winning mentality,” he said. “We need it very much and when we rediscover it, we must keep it.”

Qualification in Porto Novo today will guarantee Nigeria’s 19th appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations, having won three times, secured second spot (silver) four times and finished third (bronze) eight times in 18 previous participations.

The Super Eagles will be seeking their first victory in 497 days since they beat Lesotho 4-2 in Maseru in 2019. They have since gone four matches without a win, including throwing away a four-goal first have lead against Sierra Leone at home, according to Sports Village Square.

Nigeria were the opponents of Benin Republic (then called Dahomey) when they played their first ever international match on 8 November 1959.

Porto Novo, the venue of today’s AFCON qualifier was also the venue of the first ever Benin versus Nigeria match on November 8, 1959. Today’s game will be 21st encounter of both teams. Benin Republic have never beaten the Super Eagles in 20 preceding matches, with Nigeria winning 15 and drew five.

In total, Nigeria have scored 55 goals against Benin Republic. The scorer of the very first of the goals is Albert Onyeawuna in a Nigerian 1-0 triumph in Porto Novo in 1959.