AYC: Man City stop Iheanacho, Nwakali

English Premier League champions Manchester
City have informed the Nigeria Football
Federation that they will not release Kelechi
Iheanacho and Chidiebere Nwakali for the 2015
African Youth Championship in March in Senegal.

Both players were among nine foreign-based
pros called up by the Flying Eagles for the AYC.

The players were given a Thursday deadline to
join up with the country’s U20s in their training
camp in Kaduna.

But in a mail signed by City scouting and
recruitment operations manager, Fergal Harkin,
the EPL side said Iheanacho was injured and
may not be fit till mid-March, while Nwakali is
about to be loaned out to a club in Europe.

“With regards Kelechi Iheanacho, he is currently
injured. We believe he will be fit around the
middle of March but can keep in contract
regarding his recovery,” read Tuesday’s mail to
the NFF in part.

“For Chidiebere Nwakali, we are currently in the
process of agreeing his loan deal to Europe and
he will not be available to meet up with the
national team until further notice.
“At this moment in time, we feel it is best for his
development that he cements his place in the
club side.”
Under FIFA rules, Man City are not obliged to
release the players as the competition is an age-
grade event.

Meanwhile, the Flying Eagles will take on Nigeria
National League side Spotlight of Katsina in
another test game on Wednesday. The match
will be played at the Ahmadu Bello Stadium in
Kaduna with the kick-off fixed for 11am.

Spotlight, who have defender Mustapha Abdullahi
with the Nigeria U20 side, are gearing up for
promotion to the Nigeria top flight in the
forthcoming season.

The Katsina club, who placed 10th on the
Nigeria National League Division A table, have
made several top signings to match their
ambitions.

Spotlight have been on a pre-season training
tour of Kaduna and have so far won three and
drawn three of their matches. Their own loss
thus far was to Jamba Aacdemy, who beat them
2-1.

The Flying Eagles, who are getting set for the
2015 African Youth Championship in Senegal in
March, are also likely to battle league champions
Kano Pillars by the weekend also in Kaduna.

The Nigeria U20s are also billed to feature in an
expanded Super 4 tournament in Abuja, which
will begin next week. The other teams for the
tourney are Nigeria U23 team, Pillars, Enyimba,
Dolphin and Warri Wolves.
The Nigerian clubs are preparing for CAF
Champions League and Confederation Cup
matches in February.

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Cristiano Ronaldo wins FIFA 2014 World Footballer of the Year

The Portugal/Real Madrid player beat Argentina/Barcelona Lionel Messi

and Germany/Bayern Munich, Manuel Neuer to win the 2014 FIFA World

Footballer of the Year. You think he deserves it? By the way, that was

Messi's face when Ronaldo was announced the winner... :-)

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Investigator slams "incomplete and erroneous" FIFA report

Paris - FIFA's probe into the controversial bidding race for the 2018
and 2022 World Cups was thrown into turmoil Thursday after its own
investigator Michael Garcia complained that a summary of his report
misrepresented his conclusions.
Garcia, who carried out an exhaustive investigation into the bidding,
slammed an "incomplete and erroneous" version of his report and said
he planned to appeal.

Football's world governing body had earlier cleared Qatar and Russia
of corruption and ruled out a re-vote for the tournaments despite
widespread allegations of wrongdoing.
Garcia, a former New York federal prosecutor, spent 18 months
investigating the controversial World Cup race that ended with the
selection of Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022.

He issued a statement saying: "Today's decision by the chairman of
the adjudicatory chamber contains numerous materially incomplete
and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed
in the investigatory chamber's report. I intend to appeal this decision
to the FIFA Appeal Committee."
Hans-Joachim Eckert, chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of
FIFA's independent ethics committee, had revealed that the
investigation had not yielded evidence of corruption and there would
be no re-vote on awarding the tournaments to Qatar and Russia.

The report admitted that even though there had been a series of
worrying episodes in the bidding for the 2022 tournament, as well as
the 2018 World Cup in Russia, there was not enough evidence to
justify reopening the process.
"The report identified certain occurrences that were suited to impair
the integrity of the 2018/2022 World Cups bidding process," said the
42-page report.

"the occurrences at issue were, in the chairman's assessment, only of
very limited scope.
"In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding
process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would
require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it.

"The assessment of the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cups bidding process is
therefore closed for the FIFA ethics committee."
Qatar welcomed the decision saying they had been "confident" they
won the bid with a "clean" record ahead of rivals Australia, Japan,
South Korea and the United States.

The report also said that in Australia's bid for 2022 "there are certain
indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals in
the light of relevant FIFA Ethics rules."
Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary-general of the Qatar 2022 organising
committee, told AFP: "We were confident that any impartial
investigation was to show that our record was clean and contains no
irregularities."

England bid criticised
The report also found no evidence of misconduct related to the
Russian bid for 2018, but added that not all records had been available
to the investigation.
The computers used at the time by the Russia Bid Committee had been
leased and then returned to their owner and destroyed, meaning
access to emails was not available.

The head of Russia's organising committee, Alexei Sorokin, said they
had cooperated fully with the investigation but that some information
had been "forgotten".
"We handed over to the investigation everything that we could. You
have to understand that four years had passed and some information
is simply forgotten."

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, who is a member of FIFA's powerful
Executive Committee, told TASS news agency: "I was sure that this is
what would happen, our bidding campaign was absolutely honest."
However, the English Football Association (FA) was accused of
"violating bidding rules" in its attempt to win the right to stage the
2018 event which also included joint bids from Belgium/Netherlands
and Portugal/Spain.

It alleges that in an attempt to "curry favour" with Trinidad and
Tobago official Jack Warner, who was believed to control a block of
FIFA executive votes, the England bid team contravened bidding
rules.
England 2018 is accused of helping "a person of interest to (Warner)
find a part-time job in the UK" and sponsoring a gala dinner for the
Caribbean Football Union at a cost of $55,000 (44,100 euros).

The FA rejected the criticisms, in a statement on their website. "We
do not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England's bid or
any of the individuals involved."
The FIFA report recommended a series of reforms to future bidding
processes in an effort to protect the integrity of the sport's most
lucrative showpiece event.
These include four-year limits on FIFA executive committee posts,
the FIFA Congress, rather than the executive committee, to decide
on future venues, a more transparent rotation system and a ban on
committee members visiting bidding nations.

- AFP

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Qatar was 'confident' on 2022 World Cup probe

Riyadh - Qatar has never doubted the "clean" record by which it won
the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, a top organising committee
official said Thursday after FIFA cleared Doha of corruption.

The tiny gas-rich state also voiced readiness to help in hosting the
2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
"We were confident that any impartial investigation was to show that
our record was clean and contains no irregularities," Hassan al-
Thawadi, secretary-general of the Qatar 2022 organising committee,
told AFP.

"We were confident of ourselves and of the work we had done," added
al-Thawadi, speaking in Riyadh where world football leaders, including
FIFA president Sepp Blatter, were gathered for the opening evening
of the Gulf Cup of Nations.

The ethics committee of the football's world governing body FIFA on
Thursday cleared Qatar and Russia of corruption and ruled out a re-
vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments despite widespread
allegations of wrongdoing.
Even though the report had admitted a series of worrying episodes in
the bidding for the tournament, as well as the 2018 World Cup in
Russia, it said there was not enough evidence to justify reopening
the process.

In a break with FIFA tradition, the 2018 and 2022 tournaments were
awarded at the same time, in 2010, leading to claims of horsetrading
in the bidding process.
As concerns grew, FIFA appointed Michael Garcia, a former US federal
prosecutor, to head up the inquiry into the 2018 and 2022
tournaments.
His 350-page report was handed to FIFA on September 5.

It summed up a year-long investigation that involved interviewing
more than 75 witnesses and compiling a dossier with more than
200,000 pages and audio interviews.
The main controversy revolved around Qatar and how it was awarded
the 2022 competition which was initially to be played in the summer
when temperatures reach the upper-40s Celsius.

England violated bidding rules
It also considered claims by international labour organisations that
working conditions for migrant workers employed in the construction
of the stadia were less than satisfactory.

Amnesty International on Wednesday criticised the "woefully
insufficient" steps taken by Qatar so far to end abuses of migrant
workers in the Gulf country.
Meanwhile, head of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), Shaikh
Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa, hailed the results of the probe.

"I am satisfied that Qatar has been absolved of any misconduct in
their bid for the 2022 World Cup," he said.
President of the Association of National Olympic Committees, Sheikh
Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, also praised the outcome, adding that the
Qatari "record is successful and honours the whole region".
Despite Qatar escaping a re-vote, Thursday's ethics committee
report still raised serious concerns over its campaign.

The report again probed the role of Qatari Mohammed bin Hammam, a
former member of the FIFA executive committee who was banned
from all football activity in 2012.
In June, Britain's Sunday Times alleged that bin Hammam paid more
than $5 million (four million euros) to officials around the world
before the 2010 vote to drum up support for the tiny Gulf state.

However, the report states that payments were designed to bolster
his bid for the FIFA presidency in 2011 rather than to manipulate
Qatar's 2022 World Cup hopes.
The FIFA ethics committee meanwhile said that England had violated
bidding rules in its failed attempt to host the 2018 tournament, which
was awarded to Russia.
The accusation was immediately rejected by England's Football
Association which insisted it had conducted a "transparent bid."

Qatar's decision to sponsor the 2010 Confederation of African
Football (CAF) Congress in Angola to the tune of $1.8 million was also
brought into question during the FIFA investigation.
"It remained unclear how much the event did cost. The Investigatory
Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee concluded that this
connection, when viewed in the context of the lack of transparency
in the record, created a negative impression," added the report.
"However, the circumstances presently relevant were not suited to
affect the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/2022."

Meanwhile, head of the Doha's Football Association Sheikh Hamad bin
Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Thani said in a statement that "if officially
asked, Qatar is ready to offer any help in hosting the African Cup due
to its strong relation with Issa Hayatou, president of the
Confederation of African Football."
Morocco had said since early October that its call for a postponement
was due to the deadly Ebola pandemic, but CAF, lost patience with the
North Africans and threw them out of the competition, with a heavy
fine likely to follow.

- AFP

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FA rejects FIFA World Cup report criticism

London - England's Football Association on Thursday rejected claims
by world governing body FIFA's ethics committee that it violated
bidding rules in its unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 World Cup.

In a report released on Thursday, the ethics committee cleared Qatar
over corruption allegations regarding its successful bid to host the
2022 World Cup and criticised England's failed attempt to host the
2018 tournament, which was awarded to Russia.

The England bid team is accused of having broken rules in its attempts
to win the support of disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack
Warner, who quit his role in 2011 amid bribery allegations.

But in a statement published on its website, the FA said: "We do not
accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England's bid or any of
the individuals involved.

"We conducted a transparent bid and, as the report demonstrates
with its reference to the England bid team's 'full and valuable
cooperation', willingly complied with the investigation.
"We maintain that transparency and cooperation around this entire
process from all involved is crucial to its credibility."

The FA added: "We also note that after a lengthy investigatory
process and assessment, the report has concluded that the
'potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the
report regarding the England 2018 bid were, all in all, not suited to
compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/22 bidding
process as a whole'."

FA chairman Greg Dyke, who was not involved in England's bid for the
2018 World Cup, said that his organisation had effectively been
penalised for cooperating with FIFA's investigators.

"Those (countries) who co-operated the most seemed to be the ones
that gave them the information by which they were then criticised,
like the FA," he told Sky Sports News.
"Others, who didn't co-operate, didn't get criticised at all. Well,
there's a surprise."
He added: "I don't think anyone will accuse the FA of anything other
than behaving properly."

'Whitewash'
The 42-page report was released by German judge Hans-Joachim
Eckert, FIFA's independent ethics adjudicator, following an extensive
investigation into the World Cup bidding process by American lawyer
Michael Garcia.

It alleges that in an attempt to "curry favour" with Trinidad and
Tobago official Warner, who was believed to control a block of FIFA
executive votes, the England bid team contravened bidding rules.
England 2018 is accused of helping "a person of interest to (Warner)
find a part-time job in the UK" and sponsoring a gala dinner for the
Caribbean Football Union at a cost of $55,000 (44,100 euros).

The report also says that the England bid team provided "substantial
assistance" for a Trinidad and Tobago Under-20 training camp that
took place in 2009.
"The (England) bid team often accommodated Mr Warner's wishes, in
apparent violation of bidding rules and the FIFA code of ethics," the
report said.

"England's response to Mr Warner's improper demands, in at a
minimum always seeking to satisfy them in some way, damaged the
integrity of the ongoing bidding process. Yet, such damage was again
of rather limited extent."
The report was branded a "whitewash" by British lawmaker Damian
Collins, who has campaigned for FIFA reform.

Collins, from the ruling Conservative party, told Britain's Press
Association: "It is a whitewash as it is an attempt to con people that
there has been a full and independent investigation when there has
not been.

"The result is that allegations of bribery and serious wrongdoing
remain unanswered and they are still suppressing the full report.
"The points being made about the England bid are just a smokescreen
to try to hide these facts."

The FA has previously called for more transparency in the World Cup
voting process and accused FIFA of not doing enough to eradicate
corruption.

- AFP

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