Flying Eagles Coach, Ladan Bosso has denied having 65 players in the Abuja camp of the Nigeria U20 team.
He said the team’s focused is how to trim the 35 players to the 23 names that will be submitted to CAF ahead of the CAF U20 African Nations Cup in Egypt.
Read more: Flying Eagles Foreign Based Pros Given mid-January Deadline Resumption Date
“I have also read somewhere that we have 65 players in the camp; this is outright falsehood. There’s no way we can have that bogus number in the camp. We resumed with 35 players in the camp and that is the number we have for now. Working with my assistants, we will start to trim the squad once the overseas-based professionals start arriving in camp.”
The veteran trainer also called on stakeholders to rally round and support the Flying Eagles as the team embarks on the mission to conquer Africa for the eighth time. “I am calling on all critical stakeholders including the media to rally round and support this team. We need no distractions at this point; all we need is the support of everyone in our quest to qualify for the FIFA World Cup finals in Indonesia.”
Nigeria, hosts, Egypt, Senegal and Mozambique are to fight for two second round tickets in group A. The seven times African champions will play their group opener against Senegal on 19th February at the Cairo International Stadium, Egypt. Three days later (22nd February), Flying Eagles will slug it out with the host, Egypt before playing their last group A match against Mozambique on 25th February.
The top two teams of each group advance to the quarter finals along with the two best 3rd placed teams.
All the four semi-finalists will pick the four tickets to represent Africa at the FIFA U20 World Cup in Indonesia. The biennial underage tournament will commence on Saturday 20th May to Sunday 11th June, 2023.
