The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has requested for a reschedule of Nigeria’s World Cup qualifiers coming up in June.
Forwarding this request to the World Football Governing Body FIFA, the NFF stated that it wants the game in Nigeria’s group to be staged the same day for the sake of fairness.
According to the NFF General Secretary; Musa Adamu Malawi will have a better advantage over Nigeria if the request was not made by the NFF as Nigeria would have been engaged in crucial engagement as well as that of Malawi, so requesting for a reschedule is a right path.
“We make this request in the interest of fairness, as at the moment, Nigeria and Malawi have same number of points (five) and for Nigeria to play two days before Malawi in each of the two important qualifying games in June will give undue advantage to the Malawians,”.
“We see the FIFA Confederations Cup as a key tournament, but we also know we have to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup finals as priority.
“It is important to us to go to the FIFA Confederations Cup and then return to Brazil a year later for the FIFA World Cup finals.”
Come June the 5th, Nigeria will be taking on Kenya for the return leg in Nairobi after which they will engage Namibia in Windhoek on June the 12th before heading to Brazil for the FIFA Confederation Cup; they will now take on Malawi.
This schedule is what has prompted NFF’s action of lodging a formal complaint to the World football Governing Body, proposing that their Group F matches as well as those involving closest rivals Malawi is played on the same day. This would either be on June 5 and 12 or the original dates of June 8 and 15.
