The Nigeria Football Federation has blasted a report in one of the national dailies of Monday, 29^{th<\/sup> June, 2015, which claimed that the Federation has abandoned the U-23 National Team that is campaigning for a place at next year\u2019s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.<\/p>\n}

NFF spokesman Ademola Olajire said the report was riddled with factual errors right from the first paragraph.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is strange for the reporter to tell the world that the U-23 team is seeking to qualify for the All-Africa Games, almost THREE MONTHS after the team defeated Zambia in Lusaka to earn a spot at the Games coming up in Congo in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report went on to, unfairly, castigate the NFF for \u2018abandoning\u2019 the team. This is far from the truth because the NFF has never shirked its responsibility of catering for any of the National Teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olajire also picked holes in the claim that the team has been training and playing friendly matches in Adidas kits, and that officials are being owed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U-23 team played a friendly match against Wikki Tourists in Bauchi penultimate weekend and dorned NIKE kits. A report calculated to set our sponsors, NIKE, against Nigeria is not in the best interest of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly last week, the Head Coach of the team, Samson Siasia, praised the NFF for its efforts in meeting up with its responsibilities to the players and officials.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFF spokesman appealed to the generality of the media to always seek to verify reports before going to town.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some people, even outside the media, who would never believe they have woken up if they don\u2019t have a go at the NFF. The Federation is never bothered, as long as it continues to pursue its vision of using the game of football to further unite Nigerians and ensure the National Teams do the country proud globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe present NFF administration remains committed to putting structures and policies in place to ensure credible performances by the National Teams at international level and to build a sustainable football culture that our people would be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dream Team will take on the U-23 National Team of Congo in Port Harcourt on Sunday, 19^{th<\/sup> July, in final round, first leg qualifying match for the African U-23 Championship taking place in Senegal in December. It is at the tournament in Senegal that Africa\u2019s three representatives to the Men\u2019s Football Tournament of next year\u2019s Olympics will emerge, with the fourth \u2013placed team to go into a play-off against a team from Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"}

The Nigeria Football Federation has blasted a report in one of the national dailies of Monday, 29th June, 2015, which claimed that the Federation has abandoned the U-23 National Team that is campaigning for a place at next year\u2019s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. NFF spokesman Ademola Olajire said the report was riddled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[116,144],"class_list":["post-3428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-olympic-team","tag-featured","tag-ticker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.thenff.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}