It is cheering that Nigeria’s Golden Eaglets along with Angola, Cameroon and Guinea recently qualified for the U-17 FIFA World Cup coming up later this year in Brazil with the conclusion of the Group matches at the AFCON U-17 football tournament in Tanzania. Nigeria and Angola qualified from Group A, which had host Tanzania and Uganda as the other teams, while Cameroon and Guinea qualified from Group B, with Morocco and Senegal as the other teams in the group.
The AFCON U-17 tournament was concluded on Sunday, 28 April, with Cameroon emerging as champions after triumphing over Guinea 5- 3 on penalties. Angola picked the Bronze medal by beating Nigeria in the third place match. This notwithstanding, the Golden Eaglets’ achievements in the competition were remarkable.
Nigeria won the AFCON U-17 tournament in 2001 and 2007 and the World Cup finals in 1985, 1989, 1994, 2013 and 2015. No other country in the world has been able to match the country’s enviable records at the global youth football competition. The closest to Nigeria is Brazil which had won the competition four times. We laud the country’s remarkable achievements in this regard and call for the preservation of the country’s dominance in the competition.
However, it is worth pointing out that Nigeria did not qualify for the 2017 AFCON U-17 finals. Arising from this therefore, the country cannot afford to be complacent or take its significant achievements at this stage of the football competition for granted. The other countries in the competition are not resting.
The team managers must ensure that the members of the team are fully prepared for the next competition taking place in Brazil. It is a fact that sports do not reward indolence, indiscipline and poor planning. The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) as the body saddled with the responsibility of running football in the country must put its house in order and provide the necessary environment to nurture the country’s abundant talents at the youth level for optimal results at the youth football tournament.
But we must not forget that the idea of the world football governing body, FIFA, in coming up with this tournament is largely developmental. In doing this, FIFA believes that when talents are discovered early and nurtured, the benefits will go beneficial to all the stakeholders. From the age-grade tournaments, the newly discovered talents will eventually migrate to other levels in the game.
But it appears that this noble objective of the age-grade competitions is lost on many African and South American countries. Without doubt, the essence of the U-17 FIFA World Cup should not be to win at all costs, but to catch and nurture the talents at their early stages for optimal development and participation at the senior levels of the game. Sadly, many countries from the FIFA affiliate confederations, including Nigeria have fallen foul of this noble objective. FIFA’s determination to stamp out this negative tendency has seen some of the countries who have presented over-aged players for the age-grade competitions banned from participating in one or more editions of the game. Nigeria suffered this fate on two occasions.
FIFA has also introduced the MRI scan to help countries reduce their margins for error. In practice, before players are registered and cleared to participate in the finals of any of the FIFA age-grade competitions, they are rigorously passed through the MRI scan to scientifically determine their ages at their last birthdays before the competition. For the U-17 tournament, participants must be 17 or less at the date the competition starts.
Though the measures are not totally fool-proof, there is a lot the FIFA affiliate countries would gain from complying with the general and specific provisions of the competitions. It is good that most of them are improving on their compliance levels. We wish the Golden Eaglets a good outing at the FIFA World Cup.