Tunde Sulaiman
4 November 2007
column
Lagos — Despite appeals from Berti Vogts for a smooth build up to January's Nations Cup finals, THISDAYSports can reveal today that the outcome of the proposed Zurich meeting between the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) and Super Eagles players will go a long way in determining the fortunes of the country in Ghana.
This is because the players are determined to press once and for all for a settlement of their grievances with the Glass House at the meeting planned to coincide with a friendly against the Swiss national team on November 20th.
The bone of contention centres on outstanding allowances and flight ticket refunds.
However, FA officials are insisting that they will not allow the players to hold the nation to ransom as they were not ready to cave into any 'unrealistic' demands from the Super Eagles.
THISDAYSports scooped that although the players are ready to accept that the FA is cash strapped and will thus not push for a major upward review of their current allowances and winning bonuses, they are, however, adamant that the issue of flight tickets that blew open before the lose to the Cranes of Uganda be settled once and for all.
The Eagles currently enjoy $100 daily camp allowances and are paid $5, 000 bonuses for a win and $3, 000 for drawn games. These sums are expected to remain in place for the Nations Cup proper with a possible slight increase courtesy of the performance bonus clause built into the adidas contract.
However, while some of the players THISDAYSports spoke to over the weekend insist they have no problem with these figures, they, however, insisted that they would first thrash out the issue of flight ticket refunds before commencing on bonuses for Ghana 2008.
"They (FA) still owe us our flight ticket refunds for our trip to Kampala. We have to settle this first before we talk about what they have to offer for the Nations Cup," explained one of the players on phone from his base in Europe over the weekend.
While the FA offered to refund the players $2, 000 for flying to Nairobi from Europe the players said they paid twice that to make the trip to East Africa on time for the friendly hurriedly arranged with the Harambee Stars for their Ghana 2008 clash with the Cranes.
The impasse between the players and the FA over the ticket refund issue is believed to have contributed to the 2-1 defeat the Eagles' suffered in Kampala.
However, when contacted yesterday, FA scribe Bolaji Ojo-Oba insisted that while they were ready for frank talks they would allow the players to dictate to them.
"We're holding the meeting with an open mind we'll put what we have to offer to them and expect them to either accept or reject it, but whatever be the case we're ready for very frank talks.
"We want to clear up all the issues that might be worrying anybody now so that we'll be going to Ghana without any distractions."
Commenting on the issue of ticket refund, Ojo-Oba said: "We have told them that they are only entitled to economy class tickets. If they want to fly business class they are free to as long as they make up the difference because we can only afford economy class tickets for them."
He also said that they had cleared all the allowances they owed the players during the friendly with Mexico. "The only player we did not pay was Yakubu Aiyegbeni we've told him to send us his bank details so that we can pay his money into his account."
Ojo-Oba, however, warned that the FA would not hesitate to drop any player ready to cause disaffection in the team.
"We have 10 days before the competition (Ghana 2008) begins to make changes and we're ready to exploit the option if it will bring sanity to the team."
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