Chelsea and Nigeria footballer John Obi Mikel has revealed that he had to foot the bill for the team most of the time during Nigeria's Olympic campaign in Rio Brazil.

According to the 29 year old, Nigeria's football federation left the team stranded most of the time and he had to cough up over £30,000 to facilitate Nigeria's bronze winning campaign.

The Nigerian has claimed that the country's football body failed to take responsibility for flight arrangements and  a host of other necessities for which reason he had to take matters into his hands with the help of Nigeria's Olympic team coach Samson Siasa.

“I think if we talk about the money that I put into the team I think it was more than [£30,000],” Mikel told Goal.

“But we just had to do it.

“I said to myself, ‘I won’t let this happen. If I can help, I’ll try to help’. Sometimes there was no food, sometimes there was no pitch to train on, there was no bus to go to the training ground. So all of this was what me and the coach had to figure out, and get money together.

“I came to the camp. I sat down with the boys in Atlanta and I could see the frustration, the pain and the anger. Their aim was to play in the Olympics, their goal was to play in the Olympics.

“And for me being there and seeing what they are going through, they are young boys, they want to start their career and someone in the ministry is trying to crush that dream.”

“There was just no flight provided by the Nigerian ministry,” he added. “We planned to leave three or four days before the tournament, but we ended up leaving the day of our first game. It was a difficult one. I don’t think I have ever seen something like that before, it was crazy.”

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The Chelsea star who has not returned to his club side due to his role for Nigeria at the Olympics further revealed that he had to psyche up the young Nigerian team who were experiencing a high degree of problems off the field.
“We had lots of problems outside the pitch, but I always told the boys that you shouldn’t let that affect what we came here to do. We still want to achieve what we came here to do. We still have to represent our country and play for ourselves and our family and the people of Nigeria,” he said.

“So if the ministry don’t want to take responsibility, we have to make sure we play for ourselves and our country. The boys understand that and we made sure they went along with my message that I kept putting across to them every single day and we managed to achieve what we did achieve.”

Mikel Obi has been with Chelsea since 2006

By Musah Abelyire/ghanaguardian.com

Twitter: @OneRealWriter