The Chief Executive Officer/General Secretary of the Seychelles Football Federation, Georges Bibi, has assured soccer fans in the continent that there will be no going back on the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifying series Matchday 2 encounter between the Super Eagles and the Seychelles National Team, known as Pirates. He added that the match will take place on Saturday, September 8, as against the widely circulated date of Friday, September 7.
The Point gathered that in a mail to NFF’s Director of Competitions, Mr. Ayobola Oyeyode, Bibi revealed that the match will be played at the Stade Linite on the Mahe Island (home to the capital city, Victoria), starting from 4.30pm Seychelles time (1.30pm Nigeria time).
Seychelles is an archipelago of 115 islands on the western Indian Ocean, off East Africa, and is home to about 100,000 people.
The clash is crucial to both the Eagles and the Pirates, both teams having lost their opening games in the series. The Eagles lost 0-2 to South Africa in Uyo on June 10, 2017. A day earlier, the Pirates were hammered 5-1 by Libya’s Mediterranean Knights at the Stade Chedly Zouiten in Tunisia’s capital.
Presently, Libya’s Knights top the Group E, followed by South Africa’s Bafana Bafana, with the Eagles in third place and the Pirates at bottom.
At its meeting inside the NFF Secretariat, Abuja, recently, the NFF Executive Committee resolved, among other decisions, that “for ease of logistics and in consideration of convenience, the players (as well as team officials not based in Nigeria) fly direct into Seychelles from their bases in Europe, while the one player from Nigeria and Nigeria-based match officials fly from Nigeria aboard commercial
aircraft.”
Meanwhile, despite criticisms in some quarters over the inclusion of Odion Ighalo in the 28 players invited to prosecute the country’s September 8 Africa Cup of Nations’ qualifier against Seychelles in Victoria, Head Coach Gernot Rohr has appeared unperturbed. The German tactician has rather stuck to his decision that though Ighalo, who last scored for the Eagles a year ago against Cameroon in Uyo, missed begging chances against Argentina in Russia, which failed to impress some of the fans, he nonetheless, deserves another opportunity to make amends.
He insisted that Ighalo still has a role to play in his formation to secure the maximum 3 points in the crucial duel, adding that “this is an opportunity for Ighalo to prove his critics wrong”.
