Chief Coach of the National Under-23 Football team, Samson Siasia, has come in strong defence of his screening programme for players that will merit their shirts in the team for the tasks ahead.
Speaking through the team’s Media Officer, Timi Ebikagboro, the coach said the programme once worked for him and believe it is the best, hence his decision to use it again.
He said: “We want to be very meticulous this time around in the players who we will eventually settle for. I had used this method in the past and in the process discovered some players who were not known and today they are stars.
“We have over 50,000 youths eligible to play in this team; so inviting only a handful of league players to camp is shutting the doors to over 49,000 other eligible players.”
The former Super Eagles’ skipper and coach called up 39 players in his first open screening camp at the FIFA Goal Project in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, from November 23 to 25, while another set of 39 players converged for the second open screening at the same venue from November 26 to 28. The last batch of 38 players underwent screening from November 29 to December 1.
The team will proceed on a break on December 20 and reconvene on January 4, 2015.
Siasia has been given the task to raise a squad that will qualify Nigeria for the men’s football event of the 11th All Africa Games (AAG) taking place in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo in July 2015. The team is expected to also qualify for the CAF U-23 Championship in DR Congo, next year, and the men’s football event of the 2016 Olympic Games through the CAF U-23 Championship.
The first hurdle is an AAG qualifying fixture against Gabon, with the first leg away in Libreville towards the end of February, and the return leg in Nigeria early March. The winner of that fixture squares up against the winner of the fixture between Zambia and Madagascar, late March.
The Dream Team, as Nigeria’s Olympic squad is known, will then take on the winner among Ghana, Liberia and Congo in the qualifying race for the CAF U-23 Championship in July.
Meanwhile, Siasia has expressed satisfaction with the quality displayed by some of the players during the screening.
According to him, many of the players, especially from the academies and the Premier League, have shown the zeal to do the nation proud in the various competitions the team will be involved in next year.
He said: “Getting the best legs to play for the country is work in progress, and so far I am impressed with what I have seen from those who have made themselves available to be looked at.”
Olympic gold medallists in Atlanta, United States, in 1996, the Dream Team faltered at the 2000 Games in Australia, failed to qualify for the Athens 2004 Games, won silver medal in Beijing in 2008 and failed to qualify for the London Games in 2012.