Rio 2016 Olympic qualifier: NFF reads riot act to clubs over invited players

Rio 2016 Olympic qualifier: NFF reads riot act to clubs over invited players
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By Our Reporter  on October 22, 2015   Sports
From ROMANUS UGWU, ABUJA
THE Nigeria Football Fed­eration (NFF), has written to the clubs of invited play­ers to the U-23 Dream Team VI camp and their state FAs to warn them against withdrawing their players from the camp to prosecute league matches.
General Secretary of the federation, Dr Moham­med Sanusi, who read the riot act in Abuja, expressed shock that only four out of the over 30 invited players were in camp, warning that the trend must stop.
His words: “I was shocked when Siasia in­formed me of the situation he is passing through in his camp. I was not happy that nobody brought the issue of players shuttling between camp and clubs, leaving camp to play for clubs.
“The rules are there that if we have only four play­ers in camp, two things are possible. It is either we sus­pend the league or grant the players leave to play and return to camp. From what he told me that he does not have up to four players, I have told him that we are not obliged to release any player.
“I have directed that a letter be written to dispatch to all the clubs and also the Fas of the state the players come from to inform them that henceforth, we are not going to allow any invited play to leave the camp to prosecute any match for their clubs.
“I cannot understand why it should happen in the first place. I don’t un­derstand why a club should worry because they have two players in the national team when a club is al­lowed to register 40 players to prosecute the league. No club can jeopardise nation­al interest because of just two players in the national team. We are going to put a permanent stop to it,” he warned.
The chief scribe of the federation equally spoke on the challenge of securing the release of the foreign-based players for the tour­nament, stressing: “Let me admit that we have a big challenge and that was what cost us the Olympic ticket for the female team.
“It has been a very big problem confronting us for some time now. We have tried to tackle it at differ­ent fora that some of these CAF competitions are not in FIFA calendar making it impossible for foreign clubs to release the players to prosecute the tournament.”