The Brave Warriors match against Israel that had been scheduled for August 11 has been called off due to a problem with the processing of visas in Israel according to Namibia Football Association (NFA) Secretary General Barry Rukoro.
It had earlier been reported in a weekly newspaper that the Brave Warriors would play Israel as part of their preparations for the AFCON qualifier match against Gambia on September 4.
“It was too late for us to arrange visas for the team because there it would normally take 35 days to arrange for visas and we got the offer to play them this week,” Rukoro said.
In an email to the NFA, the agent who was organising the match, Jonathan Compan told Rukoro that they would not have enough time to make arrangements for the security at the stadium and the ticket sales without a guarantee that the Namibian team would get their visas in time.
“Israel were eager to have the match as they need to prepare for the Euro qualifiers, but neither them nor us want to organise an event if the best conditions are not gathered, and we cannot make you wait until next week to know if the visa obtention [sic] is good or not, we cannot risk to have an empty stadium or a risk with security,” Compan said in his email.
“Therefore I ask you to cancel your trip to Israel as this is event is officially cancelled due to visa obtention [sic] delays,” Campan continued.
On the FIFA website, it states that Israel will play Gambia instead on August 11, but Compan says this is not true.
“The Israeli FA (Football Association) has never been meant to play Gambia, according to the Secretary General of Israel, these are the remains of a proposition that was never accepted,” Compan said.
The coach of the Brave Warriors, Tom Saintfiet was very disappointed at the news.
“I’m very disappointed that we once again don’t have a friendly, we have only had one friendly this year against South Africa. It would have been very helpful but we can’t change that. We have to now focus on Gambia,” Saintfiet said.
As a result of this setback Namibia will not have a preparation match before they start with their AFCON 2012 qualifiers.
“It is too late to arrange another game for the Brave Warriors,” Rukoro said.
“We approached Tanzania and Algeria for a friendly but we did not get a response from them. Zambia wanted to send their Under 23 side because they probably didn’t want to pay for their professionals’ travel expenses,” he continued.
“It also looked like Mozambique would come, but they pulled out at the last minute. They wanted to charter a plane to fly to Namibia and wanted us to pay for it when we had an earlier agreement that stated that we would share the travel expenses,” he added.
Mozambique will now play against Swaziland on the same date and Algeria will play at home against Gabon. Tanzania on the other hand will not play a friendly before they play their first qualifier against Algeria in Algiers on September 3.
When asked about the effect not playing competitively before the qualifiers would have on the Brave Warriors’ already unfit team, Rukoro said, “the fitness is the responsibility of the clubs, the whole world is in preseason training.”
“How do you get guys fit in four days, it's not the responsibility of the NFA,” Rukoro concluded.