CAN Qualifier: Eagles Hit Ethiopia in Charter Flight

thisdaylive, April 12, 2011

NigeriaMonday night foreclosed any plan for a high altitude training acclimatisation for the Super Eagles ahead of the Nations Cup trip to Ethiopia on June 7.

Instead, the Super Eagles will now depart for Addis Ababa aboard a charter flight, two days before the Group B qualifying fixture which Nigeria must win to ease their path to next year’s Nations Cup, which holds in Gabon/ Equatorial Guinea.

NFF Secretary General, Amodu Musa revealed that the federation would adopt the tested strategy which they used against Kenya on November 14, 2009 to secure Nigeria’s passage to the 2010 World Cup finals. They will now arrive in Addis Ababa on June 5 - or at the latest, on the eve of the encounter.

“We are going to Addis Ababa two days before the match against Ethiopia by a special flight. We won’t have a high altitude build up for the match because if we must, we will need at least two weeks of physiological high altitude training to adapt and play at the maximum level.

Our strategy is the Kenyan option. We will arrive two days before the match, train for one day and return to Nigeria after the match. If we do that, we beat Ethiopia,” Amodu said.

The NFF scribe said that their effort would yield fruits as the match will take place at the end of the European season when all the key players will be available for selection and will be in Nigeria for the friendly against Argentina which holds in Abuja on June 1.

“For us we don’t mind losing to Argentina as it is just a friendly match. The big fixture is the one against Ethiopia. We will have all our players at our disposal before June 1. It is a match we take seriously,” he said.