Longest serving coach of the Nigeria U17 team Manu Garba has given his opinion on why most players who achieved success with the Nigeria U17 team don’t progress as expected.
The coach who has seen eleven of the players who have worked with him at U17 level progress to the senior national team of Nigeria said most times it’s a case of the life they live after making an impression that affects their career going forward.
“The World Cup is the university of football. The highest that comes about every four years and every country that qualifies for the senior World Cup come to the World Cup with their best players playing in top leagues regularly and even with that their preparation encompasses all factors in football fitness that makes a team to perform like physical fitness, psychological fitness, tactical fitness, technical fitness and mental fitness.
“Moreover, you will find out that most of the players that do well winning the FIFA U-17 world cup lack the discipline to manage success, it’s either they are overwhelmed by their new found status earning big money and fail to concentrate or they take to bad social life and you can’t combine playing football at top level and drinking alcohol and womanizing etc”, Garba said.
“Besides most of the players that made it to the top clubs don’t make the first teams in their various clubs in the year of the World Cup. Most importantly, you hardly see the team that wins the World Cup at U-17 World Cup graduate together to the senior team. These are just some factors out of many as to why African teams have failed to go beyond the quarter final of the senior World Cup”.
Garba who was coach of the Nigeria U17 team to the last World Cup in Brazil also said players from Africa are most times backward in terms of career development picking out Toni Kross as one player who was already a part of the first team set up at Bayern Munich before playing at the U17 World Cup.
“Another thing I must add is at the FIFA U-17 World Cup in South Korea, Toni Kross was already playing for Bayern Munich, so the level of exposure and playing at top level is a big plus for Europe and South America,” he added.
The coach is hoping to retain his job with Nigeria as he has applied following the decision of the NFF to declare the job vacant alongside that of the Nigeria U20 and U23 teams.
