Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi has hailed his side's character after they saw off Cote d'Ivoire in the Africa Cup of Nations quarter-finals on Sunday.
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The Super Eagles secured their place in the semi-finals with a 2-1 win over the Elephants this weekend, with Emmanuel Emenike and Sunday Mba getting the goals for the lesser-fancied west Africans.
Keshi, though, says his troops were never once intimidated by the opponents' billing as tournament favourites, and believes the last-eight result is proof of that.
"I want to sincerely thank my players for everything they did today (Sunday)," Keshi said. "The players showed character. It's the kind of character that I know we have in Nigeria. We always fight, fight, fight.
"I had absolute 120 percent confidence in my players and we had to get ourselves ready for the game. We weren't going to come here and just give it to Ivory Coast."
He added: "It was not an easy game, we tried to speed the game up. We tried to cut players like Didier Drogba and Yaya Toure out of the game.
"We took our time. We spent four days just studying the way the Ivorians were playing, so we tried our level best.
"When Ivory Coast equalised, we tried to defend well and then we worked our tactics, we pushed our players to play and we scored again."
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