Former Super Eagles and Stoke City striker, Osaze Odemwingie, has blasted Libya for their supposed revenge act on the Super Eagles of Nigeria, Soccernet.ng reports.
The Super Eagles travelled to Libya and were scheduled to land at the Benghazi Benina airport before they were redirected to the Al Abraq International airport, 300km away from their initial destination.
Upon safe landing, the Nigerian team were not allowed to leave the airport and were without food and internet for over thirteen hours.
The Libya FA in response to this act, put out an official statement claiming they experienced the same when they landed in Port-Harcourt, Nigeria for the first leg.
Osaze, in an interview with Brila, revealed the Libyan team should have filed an official complaint if they felt maltreated, rather than risk player’s lives in an attempt to avenge.
“It’s a shame to see things like this happen. It’s scary because diverting a plane to another airport is a whole different level. I don’t know who was behind this, but it clearly went too far.
If they had complaints about how they were treated, they could have filed an official complaint. I’m sure Nigeria as a country, can get things right, we can offer them apologies or explain things.
You don’t without any explanation jump into extremes, that was extreme. The main people in football are always footballers and I’m sure this whole situation became toxic that even Libyan players are not happy. Some people might not even want to play football after this for their country.
It’s very disappointing because if football people were in charge of such things will never happen. But, this a case of non-football people, without passion or love for the game, come in and upset things,” the 44-year-old revealed.
The turn of events forced the Super Eagles captain, William Troost-Ekong to announce the team made a decision to quit the game against Libya.
