The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has started the process of weeding out age cheats from the U20 team who are currently preparing for the WAFU B tournament in Ghana, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
The WAFU B U20 Boys Tournament will run from 10th – 23rd July, with the Flying Eagles to play in group A alongside hosts Ghana and Benin Republic. Their first match is against Ghana on 10th July, before they play Benin Republic on 13th July.
Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic and Togo make up group B. Nigeria will use the tournament as part of their preparation for the U20 World Cup, which will take place in Chile from 27th September – 19th October.
Led by coach Aliyu Zubairu, new players were called up to the team that secured the world cup tickets via the AFCON, and some of them have been dropped due to issues around their eligibility to play for the team.
” It’s a continuous process for us on the issue of age cheats. Sometimes it’s not like the players are older than what they claim but irregularities in their documents mean we have to drop them. Some even had multiple names on different documents”, a source in the NFF said.
” Our determination to ensure that we present a team that is truly of the age required by FIFA is non negotiable. The idea is not to cheat to win because it’s a developmental tournament”, he stated.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
