Coach Ladan Bosso is building a new national U20 team ahead of the 2023 FIFA U20 world cup.
The U20 FIFA world cup will hold in Argentina after the previous host lost the rights.
The list is not out, but what goes into making a squad list for a U20 team without MRI checks?
SportsIntel.ng takes you through the process of Building An U20 team.
Building An U20 team: Talent Identification: error by design
Firstly, for all the talks about age cheats, the Nigerian football federation uses conventional and unconventional means to check the ages of prospects.
Currently, Nigeria runs a system so disorganized it is now a pattern.
The error by design has continued to give different results over the years.
Like a faulty wall clock, the country gets it right once or twice with a generation of talents.
The 2013 and 2015 U17 and U20 squads provide the backdrop of the super eagles, except for integrated foreign players of Nigerian descent.
The process starts with the coach moving around the country, watching players across the leagues.
From NLO to NNL and the NPFL, coach Bosso identifies players that may fit into the age grade.
From the scouting trip comes the hard work of creating a preliminary list, submitted to the federation.
There’s also a matter of open screening opportunities to cater to the interest of a football-mad country like Nigeria.
Intermediaries, football academies, and others hawk their young and talented players to the camp.
Such trips built on belief, luck, and faith come from the pocket of their sponsors with the hope of doing enough to get in.
Expectedly the young and established players from the leagues Should form the nucleus, but according to an inside source, football happens to these players.
From talents melting under pressure to document discrepancies, the coaching crew faces a total breakdown of plans that initially look solid.
Building An U20 team: The standard procedure involves verification.
The process starts with players submitting their passports. The age goes through verification from documents with league bodies.
The next step is to check the ages on the FIFA Transfer Monitoring System, TMS.
In between this process is where real ages get ascertained.
That’s easy, right? No, the dysfunctional Nigerian Immigration system comes to play when the federation conducts a background check to see if any player has multiple International passports.
The findings are further processed. When all seems to be going well, the elements of surprise gifted by a scorned agent sometimes attempt to derail the exercise.
A highly-rated player got dropped because his passport got stuck at a European embassy.
A common factor for Nigerian players as our players are hot in demand. According to a FIFA report, Nigeria is the sixth country with the most sort after-players.
In the end, the list gets released to face the wrath of the Nigerian public, who uses the eye test and tales of old wives to dissect the looks and ages of the players.
Sometimes tweets and posts hit the bull’s eye but get dismissed, deleted, or die a natural death.
Players’ dishonesty, double-dealing intermediaries, and an escape from poverty characterize the weapon formed against unearthing genuine young players for the national youth teams.
It’s a coach’s nightmare, even if they are sometimes active participants.
In Summary.
Forty were invited officially by the coaching crew.
The camp was also open for players to come from home and do trials.
If you make it, you go to the camp.
There were also late invitations for some NPFL players.
Those that made the official 40-man list undergo screening before joining the team.
Some players recommended outside the 40-man list undergo screening when they get to camp, and if they have multiple documents, they get dropped.