Football hopeful on Musa’s clearance
The Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF) remains optimistic of having Ahmed Musa in
the Flying Eagles team for the African Youth Championships (AYC)
despite his club’s reluctance in releasing him for the tournament in
South Africa.
Musa, 19, has been
named in Nigeria’s 21-man list for the tournament which gets underway
this weekend in South Africa and which serves as the qualifying
tournament for the FIFA Under 20 World Cup coming up later in the year
in Colombia.
But there are
indications that Musa’s Dutch club side, VVV Venlo are not keen on
making the 19-year-old, who already has a handful of caps for Nigeria’s
senior national team, available for the eight-team tournament where the
Flying Eagles have been grouped alongside Cameroon, Gambia and
arch-rivals Ghana in Group B.
According to a
report published on a sports website on Tuesday, VVV Venlo have
declared that they do not have any plan to release the winger for the
AYC especially as the club is battling against relegation from the
Dutch top flight division – the Eredivisie.
Optimistic
But media head of
the NFF, Ademola Olajire, remains optimistic of having Musa in
Nigeria’s AYC squad especially as the Dutch club are yet to respond to
the Nigerian FA’s initial request of having the former Kano Pillars
star in South Africa.
“We sent a letter
to the club requesting for Musa’s availability for the duration of the
championship but we are yet to get a reply,” disclosed Olajire.
He added: “And until we get a reply from them stating otherwise, we’ll remain optimistic that he will be in South Africa.”
In the Dutch top
flight division, only the bottom-placed team at the end of the season
gets relegated to the second division, while the two teams ahead of the
bottom side go into a playoff with the second to seventh-placed teams
from the second division.
At the moment, and
with four games until the end of the season, VVV Venlo look set to take
part in the relegation playoffs as they are 17th on the table, one spot
and five points ahead of bottom-placed Willem II Tilburg.
They are also nine points behind 16th-placed Excelsior and 15 points
behind 15th-placed Vitesse who only need four points from their
remaining four games to guarantee their safety.
Leave a Reply