- Bows to FIFA’s superior record-keeping
BY VICTOR OSOWOCHI – Less than twenty-four hours after celebrating Super Eagles’ captain Ahmed Musa as an international soccer centenarian, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has admitted error in its earlier counting of the player’s record.
The Federation has therefore tendered an apology to the nation’s football family for misfiring in its record-keeping responsibilities.
In a statement titled; ‘NFF defers to FIFA on Ahmed Musa’s record’, the Federation said FIFA was right in its counting of matches which the Fatih Karagumruk of Turkey forward has featured for the Nigerian national team.
Countering NFF’s earlier claims of 100 appearances for the Eagles’ captain, the world football governing body, FIFA said Musa has 98 international caps after featuring in the 2022 World Cup qualifying encounter in which Nigeria defeated Cape Verde 2-1 inside the Estádio Municipal Adérito Sena in Mindelo.
The NFF said on Wednesday that it has adopted wholesale FIFA’s record of 98 caps for the former Leicester City forward, after nullifying two of the matches he had featured for the Nigerian side.
“We defer to FIFA in this regard. So Ahmed Musa has 98 caps. If he features, as expected, in the home-and-away matches against the Central African Republic (CAR) in October, he will clock the tally of 100 and the celebrations will follow in full flow,” NFF’s Director of Communications, Ademola Olajire said.
The planned celebration of Musa’s centenary status was effectively put on hold Tuesday night when FIFA said declared that Musa’s appearances in the 3-0 defeat of Togo in a friendly match in Paris in June 2017 and the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 qualifier against Algeria in Constantine in November 2017 did not count for the former CSKA Moscow player.
According to FIFA’s record, the match against Togo was struck off as both Nigeria and Togo made more than the regular number of changes in the game, while the encounter in Constantine, which ended 1-1, was deleted from the record books because Nigeria fielded an ineligible player and the result was overturned.
That match was awarded to the Desert Warriors of Algeria, even as Nigeria had already picked the World Cup ticket before the controversial qualifier.
