West London Club Chelsea have taken time to celebrate players of the club on their way to participate at next year’s FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Amongst those celebrated on the Blues’ official website are the trio of John Obi Mikel, Kenneth Omeruo and Victor Moses (currently on-loan at Liverpool) who helped Nigeria last weekend to seal her place amongst the 32 teams to compete at the Mundial.
Mikel, Moses and Omeruo featured for the Super Eagles in that contest, and having all played a part in their Africa Cup of Nations triumph last January, the Chelsea trio will hope to be involved in June.
Nigeria have qualified four times previously, most recently in 2010, when they fell at the first hurdle, going out at the group stage having failed to win a game.
Having missed that tournament with a knee injury, Mikel is yet to feature at a World Cup, while both Moses and Omeruo, if selected, will also be making their tournament bows in Brazil.
Other players who got a pat on the back from Chelsea for helping their various national teams to the World Cup include Michael Essien of Ghana , Brazilian trio of David Luiz, Oscar and Willian.
The trio of Juan Mata, Fernando Torres and Cesar Azpilicueta all got kudos for their exploits with Spain who will be at Brazil to defend the title won in South Africa.
Nigeria was the first African nation to qualify for next summer’s tournament, progressing courtesy of a 4-1 aggregate play-off win over Ethiopia.
The draw for the World Cup will be made on Friday 6 December in Bahia, with the 32 qualified nations divided into four pots.
Pot 1 will contain hosts Brazil along with the seven highest-ranked qualified teams according to the October FIFA world rankings, with the three other pots based on geographical location, ensuring each group contains a healthy mixture of teams from different continents.
With 13 European teams having qualified for the competition, there will be no more than two teams from Europe in each group
No comments:
Post a Comment