The Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) on Monday dumped the petition written by the Football Association of Malawi (FAM) in the garbage bin and ordered them to report to Calabar, the Cross River state capital on September 7 for the crucial FIFA World Cup qualifiers against the Super Eagles of Nigeria.
The Malawi Football Association had asked FIFA to move the September 7 match with Nigeria from Calabar to somewhere ‘safer.’
Perplexed by the decision of FIFA, the Chief Executive Officer of FAM, Suzgo Nyirenda, had no choice but to confirm that The Flames have no other option but to travel to Calabar for the much anticipated World Cup qualifying cracker.
“It is not like we said we do not want to travel to Nigeria. We are just waiting for the Nigeria Football Federation to provide us the guarantee. Once they do that, we will travel to Nigeria” he was quote by the Nation in Malawi.
Despite the back tracking such a guarantee is bound not to come as the NFF has said it deems it superfluous since nobody can tell Nigeria where to play in Nigeria but Nigeria.
Coach Tom Saintfiet, who personally called Calabar unsafe and questioned the fairness of the NFF must now look elsewhere to see if he can create any other type of advantage for his team before game time rolls around.
Nigeria meanwhile have an awesome record in Calabar haven only been beaten there once and it was in the 40’s on a Royal navy ship.
