Ex-Nigeria international striker Daniel Amokachi has said football development ebbed in the country after the Nigeria Football Federation abandoned developmental structures that guaranteed success in the past.
The former Super Eagles striker said Nigerian football thrived in the past because of deliberate effortstodeveloplocalfootballwhich produced great players. He said the degeneration came when the NFF decided to ditch a model that was working for another one that tended to attract foreign-born players.
Six players born outside the shore of the country started in the ill-fated match against Ghana which ended 1-1 on Tuesday and led to the country losing the World Cup ticket.
“Quality-wise we can’t take it away from Nigeria. Every day Nigeria is blessed with one immigrant player who is playing out there and he’ll always come up and say I turned down my birth country, I want to play for Nigeria when their country of birth never looked for them.
They won’t even make their birth nation squads,” Amokachi told SuperSport. “Unfortunately for us Nigeria, we’ve thrown away our developmental structure which we had that made us win the 1996 Olympics gold medal, that made that generation so great. “Stephen Keshi came into play and revived it and we saw how we won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.”
The former striker went on to laud Napoli attacker Victor Osimhen, who gave his best to help the Super Eagles in the recent game against the Black Stars that ended 1-1 and the latter advanced on the away goal rule after the initial meeting had finished goalless.
