The head coach of the Nigeria U23 team Salisu Yusuf is hardly far aways from controversies and his recent list of players invited to the Nigeria U23 camp for the AFCON qualifiers against Guinea is another case study.
As first reported by OGN when the list of the 30 invited players was made public by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) , some of the players on the list are actually above the age limit for participation for the qualifiers on the 22nd of March.
Early this morning we exclusively gathered that 16 of the invited players have been asked to leave the camp of the team as their ages isn’t the same as the approved documents needed for participation in the game.
As at this morning, the team is now left with just 14 players and officials are scampering to get players to make up the numbers to be able to have a full training session. There are plans to draft in some players from the U20 team that recently finished as 3rd at the Africa U20 Cup of Nations over the weekend.
” The team is in disarray. When documentation was done, it was discovered that as many as 16 players have passports with different ages or have ages different from the one on the Domestic Transfer Matching System (DTMS). It’s a mess to be honest”, a source at the NFF told OGN.
Aside that the foreign based players are also expected to join the team five days before the first leg game against Guinea. However this sudden revelation has indeed left the team in a state of confusion and also replied the assistant coach of the team Kennedy Boboye who termed OGN warning as a distraction.
” When that article came we asked the coaching crew if they are sure of the ages of the players called up and they said yes without a doubt. Now we have seen otherwise and this is unacceptable because it’s happening for the third time under these same coaching crew”, he rounded up saying.
Osas Mahawi