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…We are not responsible – NFF
By Amaechi Agbo
Two days after they exited the ongoing 2022 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica, Nigeria’s U-20 female football team, the Falconets, were on Tuesday stranded at Turkish airport and slept on bare floor and chairs
The team was knocked out of the quarter finals of the World Cup by Netherlands on Sunday after a 2-0 victory.
The Super Eagles former media officer, Colin Udoh, who shared the photos on his social media pages said, “Nigeria’s Falconets have been traveling from Costa Rica since 6:30am on Monday.
“They’re now in Istanbul on a 24-hour layover and sleeping on the airport chairs and floor, or wherever they can find.”
However, the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF has exonerated itself from any blame claiming the traveling arrangements were done by world football governing body, FIFA
The federation in a press release side by its head 9f communication, Ademola Olajire explained that a number of factors, including the inability to secure transit visas for players and officials of the U20 Girls National Team, Falconets, at the Istanbul Airport, led to the team having to stay 24 hours at the airport in Turkey on their way from the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup.
“The NFF did not book the team’s tickets from Costa Rica; FIFA did. FIFA also did not envisage the hitches that saw the team delayed for more than three hours in Bogota, and another one hour in Panama. By the time the team got to Istanbul, the flight to Abuja had left.
“Our officials pleaded for compassionate transit visas so as to take the players and officials to a hotel inside the town, but this was not possible as they were informed that Nigeria had been removed from the list of countries whose citizens were issued visa-on-arrival in Turkey. The airline then took the team to a sleeping area at the airport and gave them tickets to have meals every five hours. This situation has nothing to do with NFF, who had made arrangements to receive the team in Abuja before the complications in travel arrangements,” NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, explained.
It would be recalled that the NFF had implored world-governing body, FIFA to intervene with the Embassy of Germany to issue the team transit visas before their departure from Nigeria, in order for the team to be able to travel through Germany. This did not happen.
On the issue of body-wear, Sanusi said: “The players were handed three sets of green jerseys and two sets of white jerseys, several house-wear types and training jerseys. The players opted to wash only their jersey top (no other stuff) because when the first set of body-wear was sent to the laundry people at the hotel, it returned with some FIFA and NFF badges at the front and names at the back peeled by the machine.”
