Home-based players to open Eagles’ camp May 17

Super Eagles’ Coach, Stephen Keshi, says he will open his 2017 African Nations Cup qualifiers’ camp on May 17 with the home-based players, reports goal.com.

According to Keshi, the players from the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) are expected to start arriving to the national team camp in preparation for the game at home to Chad in Abuja in June.

Nigeria is grouped with Egypt, Chad and Tanzania in the Nations Cup qualifiers.

“We need to start camping next month by the special grace of God because time is not on our side again since the fixtures for the AFCON 2017 qualifiers have been released by CAF,” Keshi said.

“We will definitely start off with the players based here in Nigeria and move on until the required time the overseas clubs can release our players for us,” he added.

According to one of Keshi’s close confidants, the players are expected to hit Abuja camp as from Sunday, May 17 since the players would be involved in weekend matches for their various clubs in the local league in the country.

“The camp is expected to kick off middle of May since we will be playing our first qualifying match at home in Abuja to Chad on June 13. So the players are expected to start arriving camp after their league matches on Saturday, May 16. We should expect them to be available on Sunday, May 17,” the source disclosed.

The source also revealed that Keshi would submit his programme to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) technical committee this week.

“Keshi has already drawn up his programme for the camping and will submit it before Friday this week,” the source said.

Since tomorrow is a public holiday, it is expected that the coach would drop his programme before the end of work today.