2010 SAFWC

Nigeria are considered as one of the top ranking teams in Africa and they would potentially be a favourite to achieve World Cup 2018 qualification with ease.

However, there is now a possibility that the Nigerian Football Federation will not be involved in the qualification campaign to start with. The country is in the midst of a recession due to extremely low oil prices. Nigerian economy depends a lot on the export of oil. Since the prices have been low for more than a year, the government has had to deal with severe recession and inability to support the manufacturing sector due to the lack of power.

In such a scenario, it has just been revealed that appearing in the World Cup 2018 qualification campaign will cost several millions of dollars when the players’ wages, travel costs, and other factors are considered. For example, it is estimated that the upcoming game against Zambia will alone cost the Nigerian Football Federation around $300,000 for various means.

Transport will be the biggest factor in this price estimate, as a chartered plane to transport the squad and the staff for two days will come close to $200,000. The Football Federation is also reportedly in debt to the tune of $95,000 to each player.

“As we speak, we don’t have any kobo (a denomination of Nigeria’s naira currency) in our purse. The charges for the Airline alone is $200,000 for a 140-seater plane, and it will be on ground with the team for two days. We need between $6,000 and $10,000 for flight ticket(s) to bring in the players (from Europe). The federal government still has to play its part, because this is the beginning of our campaign for the 2018 World Cup qualifying ticket. If we must get it right, every hand must be on deck,” said a member of the Football Federation.

The Nigerian national football team has recently experienced a change within their staff members as Gernot Rohr was appointed as the new Technical Advisor of the national squad and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has given the new staff member the target of at least qualifying for the upcoming 2018 World Cup.

When it comes to qualifying for the World Cup, the Nigerian national side used to struggle as they failed to do it from 1970-1990 but starting from the World Cup of 1994, they have consistently managed to do it except for the World Cup of 2006.

AdemolaOlajire is the Assistant Director of Communications from the Nigerian Federation and and he has announced to the media what their plans are and the recent details concerning the recent changes of the Nigerian Federation.

“The only reason we have not signed a coach before now is because the previous person didn’t want to be given target but the present administration is very much concerned about qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals’’

“That is the target that has been given to Mr Rohr and he is very comfortable with it.He believes that Nigeria has the players to not only qualify for the competition but do very well in Russia’’

“MrGernot Rohr is very ready and willing to reside here in Nigeria and for your information, Rohr has an African wife, a Madagascan..Work has started already because Mr Rohr is on his way to Spain as we speak to watch the NPFL stars in the Trofeo Carranza tournament’’ AdemolaOlajire said.

In order for the Nigerian national side to qualify for the approaching 2018 World Cup, they will have to finish at the top spot of group B and gain more points than: Cameroon, Algeria and Zambia as all of those national sides are competing in the same group but only 1 will be able to snatch the top spot and qualify.

The elimination matches of the Euros are beginning from today and taking ground in the evening will be the two teams which have reached the second round in unexpected manners.

Talking about Portugal, they probably had one of the less tricky groups in the tournament, if not the least tricky and thus, top 2 was a definite possibility,
Iceland and Austria were considered to be the easy preys and Hungary should not have been much of a challenge either.

But, they are coming to the knockouts without having had a taste of victory as every team managed to hold their striking prowess.

In fact, they must be thankful that they are even in the knockouts. It’s only on goal differential that they came third in the list of the teams which achieved the third rankings in various groups.

The journey could have been over if they had been left behind to 5th or 6th in that list.

The mastery of Cristiano, which made the 3-3 result possible from nowhere on Wednesday, would not do it every time, not against a well-organized Croatia if the other 10 remain as patchy as they have been.

Regarding Croatia, they were tipped to advance anyway, but, to advance as group toppers and that too from a group which had the reigning champions Spain; it must be said that they have punched above their weight.

However, it is of little importance how many wins or how many points you come to the knockouts with. What matters is what you do here.

One would rather want to be wearing a Croatia jersey and not the Portugal one on late form, but, the history of the matches between these two teams gives the upper hand to the Portuguese.

Antonio Conte was selected as the successor of Jose Mourinho on April of 2016 as he will be one of the main figures in charge of pushing Chelsea back to the top spots of the Premier League.

Taking into consideration the recent drop of form that Chelsea suffered, trying to get them back into shape and spark life back into the team is not going to be an easy task to accomplish but according to Gianluigi Buffon, Conte is going to be able to make it happen.

“Conte is a big coach and I’m convinced he will be an excellent one at Chelsea. A Conte team is strong in defense and works constantly, day to day. Conte is a coach with a very simple idea. For the players he makes it very clear. He wants to play without risk in the defensive line and to exploit the opportunities to score goals when they come.’’ Gianluigi Buffon said as he voiced his confidence in the Italian manager Antonio Conte.

The managerial task of Conte in Chelsea will begin when the 2016 Euro’s reaches it’s end but right now Antonio Conte is focusing in pushing Italy as far as possible in the international tournament.

Italy is competing in Group E along with: Sweden, Belgium and Republic of Ireland and so far, the Italian side has snatched 2 victories from their opening 2 matches of the competition and have already qualified for the next rounds of the 2016 Euro’s.

Antonio Conte became a coveted manager back when he guided Juventus to 3 successive Serie A titles and it was because of this fairly impressive accomplishment that the head chiefs of Chelsea opted to offer him a managerial contract to the Italian and with the task to position the Premier League club back as one of Europe’s elite clubs.

Some bad news for Welsh football fans, as the FAW is looking into some suspicious betting and gambling patterns.

This comes after Port Talbot lost a game to Rhyl over the weekend at a staggering 5 to 0. Now, were they just playing terribly or is there some kind of influence on the inside that is making people play worse than they should be? Are there any kind of suspicious betting patterns going on here or was it just a loose ended game? This is what the Welsh FA chief is hoping to find out and confirm before taking any kind of action against anyone.

The official Football Association of Wales is going to be launching an investigation in light of recent claims that there’s some match fixing going on in the national league. This is an official report and while nothing has yet been reported as claims being made true or false, there will be a thorough investigation by multiple agencies according to the FAW.

So how exactly did Port Talbot lose to a team like Rhyl over the weekend, especially at a staggering score of 5 to 0 for Rhyl? This clearly could have been a bad game or some illegal betting and fixing was taking place. The board of Talbot has called for a meeting in the upcoming week so they can discuss the incident with their players and get to the bottom of the situation.

The FAW has however confirmed that it was true that some large betting did in fact take place during the game. What they’re trying to figure out now though is if that any of the players on either team were involved in the betting any if players are found to be involved, some appropriate action will be taken against any and all players who made bets.

Gianluigi Buffon’s professional career starter off with Parma when he joined the Italian club back in 1995 and from there on out he has cemented his place in the history-books of the sport as one of the best goalkeepers ever.

Throughout the playing career of Buffon, he has lifted just about every top piece of silverware that there is to win in Italian football including: Serie A, Serie B, Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana. He has been fairly successful with his national team at the international stage as he also secured the FIFA World Cup silverware back in 2006.

After having made over 600 appearances in combined total including his time in Juventus as well as with the Italian national football team, it seems like the playing career of Buffon is finally reaching it’s end as the veteran player announced his plan of hanging up his boots after the 2018 World Cup.

“Was the €54m Juve paid for me too much? No, in football what you pay for players is right. It made me feel proud and happy. And if they paid €54m for me it’s because I’m worth it. Am I the greatest goalkeeper ever? It’s not up to me to say. How long will I last? I want to play this season and then two more with Juve and retire after the 2018 World Cup. The current Juve of Allegri is one that possesses more character and personality than any other Juventus team I’ve played in.’’ Gianluigi Buffon said as he talked about his transfer fee when he joined Juventus and about his retirement – and possibly a hook up with yacht charter UK who know about his love of boats.

The last time that the Italian national football team won the World Cup was in 2006 but Antonio Conte will be aiming to lift it when the next one kicks off in 2018 and taking into consideration that it will be last big competition of Gianluigi Buffon, there is even more motivation to go for it.

Italy aren’t really considered to be one of the favorites of winning it, Spain, Netherlands and Germany are the nations that are expected to reach furthest and coming out on top but Italy does have a squad that is competitive which is being guided by a highly rated manager, Antonio Conte.

It’s been over 1 year since the 2014 FIFA World Cup reached it’s end and the football governing authority has released their financial report from the concluded event and this report shows that FIFA profited billions from the worldwide football competition which is a staggering amount of money and it’s because of this kind of things that the World Cup, or more specifically, FIFA has earned such a bad reputation in the world of football.

Brazil had to spend $15 billion for the previous edition of the World Cup to take place; a large amount of this money was public money which means that it was supposed to be used to help out the citizens of the South American with new roads, infrastructure and things of this nature and this is why so many protests in relation to the World Cup taking place in Brazil were held even before the event took place and why it still continues being an issue.

Including all the rights from TV, Marketing, Licensing and Hospitality, FIFA earned revenues in the region of $4 million while their costs were less than half of their total revenues.

Some of the biggest costs that Brazil had to deal with in getting ready for this competition were in relation to the construction of the stadiums and transportation structures and FIFA didn’t contribute in any way for these staggering costs, which is why Brazil had to offload so much cash in removing 12 of their own stadiums as well as completely building new ones so that the competition could take place.

The majority of FIFA’s World Cup spending went to the participating teams and confederations as well as TV production costs and all of this racked up to around $800 million in costs for the football governing authority which is not much compared to their significantly high revenue earned from the 2014 World Cup.

Netherlands have gone through a very bad spell in the last couple of years and this was largely demonstrated by the nation’s inability to qualify for the Euro 2016 despite being one of the top in the world.

Netherlands remain one of the best ranked teams, but they have been suffering from highly inconsistent form even from the World Cup 2014. The appointment of Guus Hiddink – for a second spell in charge of the team – was expected to improve matters but the team has regressed even more. The former Chelsea boss was unable to prevent Netherlands from failing to qualify for Euro 2016 and this led to the appointment of Danny Blind recently.

Bland has a major task to revamp the team with fresh blood since the likes of Robin van Persie and Arjen Robben are unlikely to be available by the time the next World Cup kicks off. A more immediate concern will be to improve the form of the team. The manager has set his sights upon using a defensive tactics primarily in order to avoid defeat. Since there is no Euro 2016 to compete, Netherlands will only be taking part in friendly matches for almost a year. The first among those friendlies will be against Wales.

“I get the feeling that we need some more defensive stability. We could use the 5-3-2 formation that we used at the World Cup, but playing with two holding midfielders is an option as well. The main thing is that we need a strong defensive core. I cannot say yet how we will play, though.We are not able to dominate our opponents at this stage. We will be using the same formation against Wales and Germany,” said Blind. The team has not kept a clean sheet since the 2-0 win over minnows Latvia.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is one of the most powerful men in the world and he has recently come out in support of FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

The support given to Blatter is widely seen as a gratitude for giving Russia the opportunity to hold the World Cup 2018 competition. The tournament returns to Europe for the first time since 2006. However, there have been various allegations of corruption with regard to the bids for 2018 and 2022. The latter has been won by Qatar and it still remains doubtful as to whether the competition will be held in the Middle East.

Putin, though, has claimed that he does not believe in the corruption allegations that have been thrown up against Sepp Blatter. In fact, he has recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he has done in football. Since the Swiss became the FIFA president for the first time in 1998, the game has gone from being popular in South America and Europe to becoming a truly world sport. It is now the most popular across all countries, while the game has also grown in magnitude with regard to under 20s level. It has also succeeded in incorporating and making popular the women’s game too.

“We all know the situation developing around Mr Blatter right now. I don’t want to go into details but I don’t believe a word about him being involved in corruption personally. I think people like Mr Blatter or the heads of big international sporting federations, or the Olympic Games, deserve special recognition. If there is anyone who deserves the Nobel prize, it’s those people. The way there is this fight against corruption makes me wonder if it isn’t a continuation of the bids for 2018 and 2022,” said Putin ahead of the World Cup 2018 qualification draw.

It’s well known at this point that Russia is going through an economic struggle and especially in the world of football and this is evident by the fact that there is an amount of coaches who haven’t been paid including Fabio Capello.

There have been issues involving the Russian Football Union with an increasing debt that has reached the region of $26 million and it was just too much for the RFU to handle as 235 delegates voted in favor of the dismissal of the president Nikolai Tolstykh.

The financial conflicts that Russia is experiencing is starting to affect the country on a higher scale and now reports have begun to emerge which claim that the Russian government is trying to seek ways to host the approaching 2018 World Cup in cheaper ways and one proposal that has risen is to use prisoners to help prepare the worldwide football tournament.

Alexander Khinshtein is a lawmaker and he has received the support of the Russian prison service that would allow the proposal of using prisoners to help with preparations involving the approaching 2018 World Cup. If everything falls through and indeed happens, it would aid in the process of keeping costs for the football tournament down as Russia usually pays its prisoners around $300 per month for labor projects.

Khinshtein told the media: “It’ll help in the sense that there will be the opportunity to acquire building materials for a lower price. And apart from that it’ll make it possible to get prisoners into work, which is very positive.”

Russia is attempting to find alternatives in preparation for the 2018 World Cup as they have a budget which is more than $12 billion but due to the recent corruption scandals and everything else that is going around in FIFA, this budget might be changed.