Eden Hazard claims he’s back to full fitness ahead of Chelsea’s trip to Roma

Eden Hazard is desperate to start versus
Roma at the Stadio Olimpico (Picture: Getty) Eden Hazard has told Antonio Conte he’s back to full fitness again ahead of Chelsea‘s encounter with Roma in the Champions League.


The forward missed the beginning of
Chelsea’s campaign after sustaining an
ankle injury while on international duty with
Belgium in the summer but has started the
Blues’ last four matches in the Premier
League. Hazard scored the only goal of the game in
the side’s 1-0 victory at Bournemouth on
Saturday and has stressed he’s desperate
to get more minutes under his belt in
midweek. In the lead-up to Tuesday’s trip to Roma,
Hazard told Chelsea TV: Yeah for sure [back
to full fitness], definitely. I’m training hard,
the injury is the past

Antonio Conte’s side travel to the Italian
capital in midweek (Picture: Getty) ‘I’m fully ready for the next game, I just
want to play. ‘A big week is coming, so it was important
also for the confidence to stay high, after the
game against Watford, to win at
Bournemouth


‘We are full of confidence now, two big
games in Champions League and Premier
League. And we are ready to play both.’

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Nigeria Super Eagles to get $1.5m preparation grant

the Super Eagles and other teams that qualified
for the FIFA 2018 World Cup are to get $1.5m
grants from FIFA to aid their preparations for
the tournament bill to start June 14-July 15 in
Russia. Each team is also guaranteed $8m for playing
in the group stages of the World Cup.
The winning team will get a record $38m in
prize money, after world football governing
body Fifa boosted its financial offering to
record levels. Runners-up in the final can console themselves with a $25m prize

Progressing through to the first knock-out
stage boosts the prize to $9m while a
quarter-final finish is worth $14m.In the
much-derided third place play-off, $42m is
shared between the two sides with the victor
taking home $22m. A total prize money pool of $400m
represents a 12 per cent increase on the $
358m paid out to teams at the 2014 World
Cup in Brazil, where victors Germany
received $35m. The money is paid to a nation’s football
association, who will have negotiated their
own financial agreements with their players. Fifa president Gianni Infantino said the prize
money increase represented “a positive
sign in terms of the healthy financial situation
of Fifa”, despite the organisation’s $369m
loss in 2016. The final round of qualifying for the
tournament takes place next month but 22 of
the 32 competing nations have been
confirmed, while some big names such as the
USA and Holland have already failed to make
the cut. Meanwhile, FIFA has set March 16 2018
deadline, for accepting bids to host the global
championship in 2026. Only two bids have been submitted so far
and they come from the Royal Moroccan
Football Federation (FRMF) and, a joint bid,
from the United States, Canada and Mexico

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FIFA WORLD CUP: Eagles open camp Nov 5 in Morocco

Super Eagles will resume camp November 5
in Morocco ahead of their last game of the
FIFA World Cup qualifier against the Fennec
Foxes of Algeria on November 10




The Super Eagles who sealed up their
qualification with 1-0 win over Zambia in Uyo
are expected to train and acclimatise to the
weather conditions in Algeria before the
formality match. Coach Gernot Rohr will meet
up with the team in Morocco from his vacation venue in France. They will leave for Algeria on November 8.
After the game the Super Eagles will move to
Russia where they take on Argentina in a
friendly on November 14.


The team list will be released on Monday.
Coach Rohr is being expected to name the
same squad that faced Zambia with exception
of Victor Moses who is nursing an injury. Meanwhile Serbia are reportedly interested
in playing a friendly with Nigeria ahead of
the World Cup. Both nations secured
qualification for the tournament earlier this
month, and Score Nigeria reports that
officials are working behind the scenes to button down the details. Temi Gold, the president of the Serbia-Nigeria
Chamber of Commerce, has revealed that
Serbian representatives have reached out to
the Nigerian Football Federation. The teams have met in just one prior match,
a pre-World Cup friendly in 1998 in Belgrade
which was won 3-0 by the hosts (who were
then known as Yugoslavia).

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