Nigerians waited and held their breath collectively on Tuesday with expected release of the provisional 35-man list for the 2014 Fifa World Cup finals in Brazil.

Super Eagles head coach, Stephen Keshi and members of the technical committee of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) were scheduled to brainstorm on the issue before the list would be made public.

It didn’t happen. No list was released.

Rumours and speculations begun to make the rounds as to why the list was not released on Tuesday but supersport.com took the initiative and spoke to several individuals who attended Tuesday’s meeting in Abuja.

Spokesman of the NFF’s technical committee, Paul Bassey was among the individuals who spoke to us.

He noted that there was a mutual decision from both parties (coach and NFF chiefs) to put the list on ice for the moment with several issues still to be thrashed out.

“The belief among all Nigerians was that the list would be released today after we meet with Keshi but that did not happen,” Bassey told supersport.com on Tuesday.

He noted that no country going to Brazil has made public their list of players for the World Cup and reasoned that it is only wise Nigeria to hold their cards close to their chest for now.

“We have agreed to have further consultations before we reach a decision on this issue.

“Austin Ejide is injured for instance….there is no reason to rush anything. The coaches still need a few days to clearly ascertain several things.

“We have not heard about any of the other countries through to the World Cup that has released their list of players so there is no need to rush.

“In the next one week or two at most, the list will be released,” he said.

Nigeria are in group F of the World Cup alongside Argentina, Iran and Bosnia-Herzegovina.