Nigeria's Olympic plans in chaos
By Oluwashina Okeleji (BBC Sport, Lagos)
4 July 2008
Nigeria's trip to the USA has been cancelled
Nigeria's Olympic men's football squad has cancelled a training trip to the US due to administrative lapses.
The so-called Dream Team IV were due to play their Olympic counterparts from Honduras, as well as Trinidad and Tobago in Miami as part of their preparations for August's Beijing Olympics.
"We can't guarantee meeting the deadline set by the organisers so we withdrew our visa applications at the US embassy," Olympic coach Samson Siasia told BBC Sport.
"I made efforts to secure a comfortable date for the game but the whole situation has got out of hand.
"It would have been difficult to obtain the visas at such short notice; we tried to get them while in Portugal (on a previous training trip) but they told us to apply in Nigeria.
"We could get the visas here but it would have been too little too late to embark on the trip and play in these games.
The former Nigerian international admitted the cancellation of the USA trip was "a slight dent" to the teams' build-up for the Olympic tournament in China.
He insists their scheduled trip to South Korea for a warm-up game en route to China is still on the cards.
"We'll travel to South Korea and conclude our preparations there before leaving for China, it'sonly a minor setback but we'll be fine.
The 1996 Olympic gold medallists are in Group B at the Beijing tournament alongside Holland, USA and Japan.
Dream Team IV cancel US tour
kickoffnigeria.com
Posted: 2008-07-04 14:21
The Olympic men’s football team's proposed playing tour of the United States has been cancelled after the match organisers baulked at providing a $50 000 surety to the Honduras team in the even of Nigeria failing to show up.
Dream Team IV were due to fly out on Monday for two games against Honduras and Trinidad and Tobago, but planning failure meant that the team were only scheduled to leave on Monday July 9, the same day they were due to play their first game against Honduras.
The Honduras team, in view of Nigeria's previous failure to honour their last friendly game in the United States, demanded a $50 000 surety from the match organisers to cover their expenses in the event that the Nigeria team failed to show up for the game.
Unsure of Nigeria's itinerary, the orgnaisers refused to put up the surety and Honduras made it clear they would not honour the game without the surety.
Samson Siasia was subsequently forced to withdraw the team passports from the US Embassy in Abuja on Wednesday.
"The match organisers needed to put down a guarantee of $50 000 to the Honduras federation before they would agree to play the game as they were not sure of when we were coming and they had other engagements," Siasia told KickOffNigeria.com.
"Since were only leaving on the 9th, there was no way we could get there on time and the organisers refused to put the money up."
But why were the team only scheduled to leave on the day they were due to play the game? Siasia declined to say but KickOffNigeria.com understands that the matter was administrative.
While the true picture remains unclear, it appears there were slight changes in dates from the July 15 to July 9 which was communicated to the Nigeria officials, but the NFA apparently failed to get back to the organisers and acted on the basis of the original dates in booking flights.
NFA officials are currently at a retreat in Makurdi, but Media Officer Ademola Olajire has informed KickOffNigeria.com that the Association would respond as soon as possible.
