TheCable

‎The Nigerian U23 football team to Rio 2016 is stranded in the USA, for the third time in a space of six days.

The Olympic team failed to fly out from their training base in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America, leaving players and team officials dazed and frustrated as they also worry the team will suffer jet-lag by the time they finally land in Brazil.

Officials have now said they hope on a chartered flight to take them directly to the Brazilian city of Manaus, where they will play their first two matches against Japan and Sweden.

They open their campaign on Friday against Japan by 2am Nigerian time.

The flight time between the two cities is around eight hours.

The team were due to fly out to Brazil by Tuesday afternoon, but again the team’s ticketing problems persisted.

The Dream Team VI were originally to have departed for Brazil on July 29.

This was then shelved to Monday, August 1, before Tuesday’s departure date.

Although these arrangements are the responsibility of the sports ministry and Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC), Solomon Dalung, minister of youth and sports, recently said he was unaware of the team’s programme for the Olympics.

It was also reliably gathered that ‎William Ekong-Troost has left the Atlanta camp for his club.