CAF to decide Enyimba’s clash vs Al Ittihad today

… LMC reschedules matchday 1 fixtures of 2021/22 NPFL The Confederation of African Football will today meet to deliberate over Enyimba’s appeal to have their rescheduled first leg CAF Confederation Cup match against Al-Ittihad replayed at a different venue. It will be recalled that the first leg of the encounter was billed to hold on […]

• … LMC reschedules matchday 1 fixtures of 2021/22 NPFL

The Confederation of African Football will today meet to deliberate over Enyimba’s appeal to have their rescheduled first leg CAF Confederation Cup match against Al-Ittihad replayed at a different venue.

It will be recalled that the first leg of the encounter was billed to hold on November 28 in Tunisia but the two-time CAF champions were barred from entering the North African country due to strict COVID-19 restrictions.

CAF, however, asked Al-Ittihad of Libya to choose any of December 17, 18 and 19 to host the first leg of their Confederation Cup tie against Enyimba. Ittihad instead appealed to have the match ruled in their favour as a walkover which was rejected by CAF.

The new dates didn’t go down well with Enyimba who wrote to CAF for the game to be rescheduled and their request was granted which is up for hearing today.

Speaking with the club’s media officer, Zazi Bariza Samuel, Enyimba was not going to honour the game because of the cost implications and it was against the first circular from CAF that the game will be played at a neutral ground.

“CAF sent a circular that the game will be played at a neutral ground only for them few days later to say it will be played in Libya. We were wondering why they wanted us to go to Libya when the original fixture could not hold which was no fault of ours.

“Going to Libya will be expensive as we will take a chartered flight. We made it very clear to CAF that we will not be able to make that game as we were not at fault to what led to the failure of the first leg,” he said.

Meanwhile, the League Management Company (LMC) has rescheduled all the matches for matchday 1 of the 2021/22 Nigeria Professional Football League season from the 17th to 19th December except for MFM vs Remo Stars which will go on as scheduled.