Nigeria Content Online

Dutch club, VVV
Venlo has agreed to make Ahmed Musa available for the African Youth
Championship (AYC), but the highly-rated Nigerian forward will only get
to the team’s camp in South Africa on Sunday, a day before the Flying
Eagles’ opening match against Ghana. This is because Musa will play in
Venlo’s league game away to Roda on Saturday.

The Dutch team had earlier refused to release the 19-year-old for the tournament which gets underway on Sunday in South Africa.

This was mainly as
a result of VVV Venlo’s poor position on the Dutch Eredivisie table,
where they are presently enmeshed in a relegation battle.

But Musa was able
to secure his entry visa into South Africa on Thursday in Amsterdam and
will fly out to Johannesburg on Sunday, in time for Nigeria’s opening
match of the AYC against the tournament’s defending champions on Monday.

He will however get
to play only against Ghana and Cameroon before returning to the
Netherlands. He will, nevertheless rejoin the Flying Eagles to
prosecute the remainder of the tournament, that is, if the Nigerian
team makes it to the semi-finals after their game against Gambia on
April 24.

The Nigerian team
left for Johannesburg on Thursday evening for the tournament which runs
from April 17 to May 1. They will arrive South Africa on Friday morning
and will have two days to acclimatize before Monday’s game against
Ghana.

Change in venue

The game against
the Ghanaians will however now take place at the Dobsonville Stadium in
Soweto instead of the Rand Stadium which had earlier been billed to
host the game.

Plans by the
tournament’s organizers to use the Rand Stadium were scrapped owing to
the increasing cost of hosting a tournament that was only awarded to
South Africa following the escalation of violence in Libya in February.

The Dobsonville
Stadium will also host most of the tournament’s matches, except two –
the Mali versus Lesotho game on April 23, and the Nigeria against
Gambia tie on April 24 – which will be played at the Milpark Stadium.

All matches will have free entry but will be ticketed for safety
reasons, while the four semi-finalists will qualify for the Under-20
World Cup in Colombia in October.