Federation of International Football Associations; FIFA, has corrected the Nigerian Football Federation’s record that Super Eagles’ Captain, Ahmed Musa has earned 100 caps for the Nigerian national team.
FIFA insists that the Fatih Karagumruk winger has made 98 appearances for Nigeria and will only become the third Nigerian player to reach the centurion mark playing for the three-time African Champions after Joseph Yobo and Vincent Enyeama if he features for the team in their double-header against the Central Africa Republic next month.
FIFA clarified that Musa featured in two games for the national team, which were not recognised by world governing body.
The games are the unofficial friendly against Togo in 2017, which the Eagles won 3-0 with Musa scoring twice at the Saint-Leu-la-Forêt stadium, in France and the 2018 World Cup qualifier against Algeria, which ended 1-1 in Constantine, but the result was overturned by FIFA and Algeria awarded a 3-0 win, after Nigeria fielded an ineligible player (Abdullahi Shehu) for the game.
The Nigeria Football Federation has admitted error in its earlier counting of Super Eagles’ captain Ahmed Musa’s record.
The Federation said FIFA was right in its counting, in a statement titled, ‘NFF defers to FIFA on Ahmed Musa’s record’.
While NFF earlier said Musa had made 100 appearances for the Eagles, FIFA said he had 98 caps for the national team after featuring in Nigeria vs Cape Verde 2022 World Cup qualifier.
NFF in a statement on Wednesday said it deferred to FIFA’s record of 98 caps for Super Eagles’ captain Ahmed Musa, after the nullification of two of the matches he played.
“We defer to FIFA in this regard, so Ahmed Musa has 98 caps. If he features, as expected, in the home-and-away matches against Central African Republic in October, he will clock the tally of 100 and the celebrations will follow in full flow,” NFF’s Director of Communications, Ademola Olajire, said on Wednesday.
FIFA said on Tuesday that Musa’s appearances in the 3-0 defeat of Togo in a friendly match in Paris in June 2017 and the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 qualifier against Algeria in Constantine in November 2017 did not count.
The match against Togo was struck off as both Nigeria and Togo made more than the regular number of changes in the game, while the encounter in Constantine, which ended 1-1, was deleted because Nigeria fielded an ineligible player and the result was overturned, with Algeria awarded the game, even as Nigeria had already picked the World Cup ticket before the tie.
