The reason why Nigeria’s U-20 female football team, the Falconets were stranded in Istanbul, Turkey has been revealed.
Recall that pictures of the footballers sleeping on the bare floors at the airport went viral on social media.
The Falconets were returning to the country after their exit from the FIFA U20 World Cup in Costa Rica when the incident happened.
DailyTrust reported that the girls departed their hotel in Costa Rica at 6.30 am local time on Monday, and were billed to travel via Colombia to Istanbul for the flight to Abuja.
Unfortunately, Turkish Air delayed their flight from Colombia to Turkey for 2 hours 30 minutes which led them to miss their connecting flight to Turkey.
As a result, they also missed the Turkey connecting flight to Abuja.
Daily Trust gathered that the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) officials led by Ruth David pleaded with the airport authorities to allow the team get a hotel accommodation but they insisted that since the team doesn’t have transit visas, the players would not be allowed to step out of the airport.
Falconets won all three group C matches to earn a maximum of 9 points, but their superb performance was put to a halt in the quarter-final when the Netherlands beat them 2-0.
