Nigeria’s Olympic footballers are cutting it fine with their arrival in Rio de Janeiro with their flight expected to touch down in Brazil less than 36 hours before their opening match of the men’s football tournament.
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The team is scheduled to play Japan on Thursday evening in Brazil which is (2am Friday morning local time).
“[The Nigerian Olympic football team] were stranded at the airport and nearly not going to make their match against Japan”, said Reese McCranie, director of policy and communications for Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta.
With the 10-hour flight, the Nigerian team will arrive in Manaus with no more than 18 hours until kickoff.
Exactly 20 years ago, they made Olympic football history in 1996 by becoming the first African and non-European and South American team to win the gold medal. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article. According to Collin Udoh, one of the preeminent sources of Nigerian football, the government sent the payment but it was not received in time due to a time difference issue.
Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Their is delay as the plane which assigned for the team is “too small”.The team team media officer Timi Ebikagboro spoke to BBC Sport and said: “The players were uncomfortable with the size of the plane”. “Everyone was happy to help them with another miracle by getting them to Manaus”.
On his plan for the next game, Coach Siasia said: “We just won a game; we can’t and won’t allow this victory get into our heads”.
“Nigeria has tough skin”, he said.
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Shinzo Koroki converted the penalty before Oghenekaro Etebo got Nigeria back in the lead. But that flight never took off. News stories displayed here appear in our category for General and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.theeagleonline.com.ng as the source. For the protection of AP and its licensors, content may not be copied, altered or redistributed in any form.
