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CAF Confederation Cup

BENIN REPUBLIC TO HOST RIVERS UNITED VS BLOEMFONTEIN CONFEDERATION CUP DUEL

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BY KUNLE SOLAJA.

The rescheduled CAF Confederation Cup duel involving Nigeria’s Rivers United and South Africa’s Bloemfontein Celtic will now hold in Porto Novo, Benin Republic on Sunday 23 January.

The match was to have been played in Port Harcourt on 6 January but the South Africans were not prepared for the seven-day quarantine which Nigerian government special task force on Covid-19 prescribed.

South Africa is one of the red flag zones of the new variant of Covid-19.

At the prompting of letters from both the Nigeria Football Association and their South African counterparts, (SAFA), CAF rescheduled the match and gave the NFF up till Tuesday (12 January) to find a venue from a neighbouring country with more lenient Covid-19 protocols regarding travellers coming from South Africa.

.Rivers United have a 2-0 away advantage.  Sports Village Square also gathered that the designations of the match officials are maintained. Rivers United are to take charge of all organizational expenses in the neutral country as the host club and to ensure that the visiting team has the approvals for the entry in the neutral country.

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The additional player registration period started on Sunday 10th January, but neither Rivers United nor Bloemfontein Celtic are allowed to field any of the players registered during this period for the rescheduled match.

The winner of the match will play South Africa for a place in the group stage of the Confederation Cup.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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