Nigeria sports minister apologizes for Olympics travel chaos

The Nigerian U23 football team’s Olympic journey got off to an acrimonious start, with plenty of confusion and controversy about their delayed journey from their Atlanta-based training camp to Brazil itself, but since arriving in the country, they’ve done nothing but impress.

After hugging and exchanging pleasantries with players and officials, Dalung said: “I want to apologise for all the circumstances that led to your late arrival here”.

Sports minister Solomon Dalung took responsibility for what he called the “unfortunate incident” and said in a statement that he went into the team’s dressing room after the Sweden game to apologize to players.

The Coach of Nigeria’s U-23 team, Samson Siasia, has made a bold declaration that he is not concerned about who the Dream Team VI will face in the quarter finals of the men’s football event at the Rio Olympics.

He added that Dream Team faced similar challenges on their way to winning the Africa U23 Cup of Nations in Senegal a year ago, which qualified Nigeria for the Olympics.

Nigeria and Chelsea midfielder John Obi Mikel recently denied reports that he gave $30,000 of his own money to some of his teammates on the Olympic team as an incentive.

Dalung was accompanied by the Nigeria’s Ambassador to Brazil, Adamu Emozozo and his permanent secretary in the ministry, Chinyeaka Ohaa.

Despite the issues, Nigeria won that game 5-4, and then beat Sweden 1-0 on Sunday to become the first team into the quarterfinals.

He said he was not bothered about avoiding host nation Brazil in the quarter-final stage.

“As you all can see, today [against Sweden] my defence line didn’t concede any goal, yes myself and my technical crew worked very hard to correct all the lapses we noticed in our first game and I am happy my boys stood their ground and kept a clean sheet today”.