A member of the Nigeria Football Federation ( NFF) says it was impossible for coach of the Nigeria U23 team Imama Amapakabo to build his team around home base players before the first leg of their Africa U23 Cup of Nations Qualifiers against Libya, which they lost 0-2.
Imama was widely criticised by some section of the Nigerian press for relying on foreign based players who were fielded with some of them playing in the game after just one training session with the rest of the team.
During the course of the game it was clear that the Nigerian team lack cohesiveness particularly in attack and midfield where most of the players featured were playing with themselves for the first time on matchday.
In his defence, a member of the NFF said it isn’t entirely the fault of Imama as he did calll up 30 players from the local scene but had to drop over 20 of them after two weeks in camp due to issues of age discrepancies.
Most of the players the coach was hoping to build his team around were not having proper documentation as the ages on their passport is different from the ones on some other documents.
Imama was left with no choice but to drop the players he called up and had to call up fresh players with just a week to the game and as a matter of fact only four players from his original list of 30 players called up made the final cut for the game against Libya.
