Retired Nigerian FIFA badged referee, Dr Alex Mana, has criticised the plans of the Nigeria Football Federation to take the Super Eagles of Nigeria to Addis Ababa the venue of the first leg World Cup 2014 Play Off against Ethiopia 24-hours before the game’s kick off.
arrival plan for the Super Eagles in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the crucial first leg tie of the 2014 World Cup qualifying play-offs against the Walya Antelopes.
The NFF has scheduled October 11 as departure date for the Eagles aimed at countering the expected high altitude in the East African state for the game against the Ethiopians on Saturday, October 12 at the Addis Ababa National Stadium.
Mana took a swipe at the decision insisting that the football body is unwittingly shortening the Super Eagles’ survival opportunities against their Ethiopian counterparts, the Walya Antelopes.
“The 24-hour arrival plan is obviously laughable, we’re giving Ethiopia undue advantage, we won’t even gain much with weeks of acclimatisation not to talk of a day old acclimatisation.
“It’s bad not to acclimatise at all. There is a disadvantage there already due to the high altitude but if you acclimatise you can chance to bend the minuses a little.
“I know the NFF has a handicap, as majority of our players is everywhere in the world coupled with clubs varying restriction on the release of players for their national team assignment.
“That’s why it’s good for a country to have the nucleus of their players in one region not as it’s in our case our players are virtually everywhere in the world thereby making it a daunting task to get the players together on time.
“Egypt dominated the continent for a long time before the recent crisis because majority of their players play on the continent,” said the National Institute for Sports (NIS) lecturer.
Though Mana is positive Nigeria will come out of the Addis Ababa duel unscathed he will prefer the nation queue behind Eagles manager, Stephen Keshi to get more domestic players on board of the national team.
“Of course, the high altitude in Ethiopia will surely play its pranks on us but with little doggedness on the part of the players we may survive the scourge and emerge unscathed.
“But we can manage similar incident in future on permanent basis by encouraging the ongoing effort by Keshi to bring in more local lads in the team so that we’ll depend less on the foreign-based players,” Mana said.
Both sides will meet in the return leg in Calabar, Nigeria in November for the decisive leg in which the winners over the two legs will qualify for the quadrennial global football fiesta coming up in Brazil next year.
