adminTogo captain Alaixys Romao has said he will not go to Libya for Friday’s World Cup qualifier unless FIFA president Sepp Blatter is there too and sits on the team’s bench. Romao (29) had warned that the country’s players feared a repeat of their horrific 2010 Africa Cup of Nations experience.Three people, including two members of the Togolese delegation, were killed by machine-gun-wielding separatists when the team made its way to the Angolan enclave of Cabinda for its group stage games at the Nations Cup that year.
Romao was joined by international team-mate Jonathan Ayite, who plays for Brest, in leaving the team’s hotel in the Togolese capital, Lome, to travel back to France on Monday.
The Marseille midfielder felt the fears he had raised about the Togo players’ safety, voiced in an interview with L’Equipe, had not been sufficiently addressed.
Although FIFA agreed to move the match from Benghazi, where 30 people were killed and 100 injured in violent clashes last Saturday, to Tripoli, which staged Libya’s goalless draw with the Democratic Republic of Congo last week, Romao was unimpressed.
“My cry for help was not really taken seriously,” the captain told L’Equipe. “I won’t go to Libya where I won’t feel safe — even in Tripoli — except if Sepp Blatter goes with us, sleeps in the same hotel as us and sits in our dugout.”
With continued fighting among rival factions in post-Colonel Gaddafi Libya, Togo would like the game to be moved to neutral territory. Coach Didier Six said he had been warned by French authorities in Libya that they could not guarantee his safety.
“A football match does not justify putting human life at risk,” Romao said. “Everything going on around this game is bizarre and not very professional. — ESPN.
Online Reporter