Former Nigeria striker, Daniel Amokachi has claimed that the country fielded “rejected players” in their 2022 World Cup playoff against Ghana.
Amokachi, speaking on Super Sport, called on football administrators in Nigeria to return to developmental structures that saw the national team reach greater heights.
Of late, the Super Eagles have often relied on dual-eligible players who were born abroad.
Ola Aina, Joe Aribo, Calvin Bassey, William Troost-Ekong, Leon Balogun and Ademola Lookman are some of the stars who opted to play for Nigeria.
“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.
“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,” Amokachi said.