Former captain of Nigeria’s cadet national team the Golden Eaglets, Fortune Chukwudi has charged administrators of the game to ensure they develop a strong youth development structure for the country, Sports247 reports.
Speaking against the Golden Eaglets’ absence from this year’s African U17 Championship in Morocco, which means the five-time world champions will miss the next global event, Chukwudi put it all down to lack of a solid grassroots structure in the country.
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The former Sharks of Port Harcourt defender declared, “It’s the same thing we have been facing since the onset, and it’s as a result of us not actually paying attention to the grassroots. We have not been building our football from that point.
“Every player in Nigeria should be able to get to a point where they would be able to sell themselves, but we don’t have that platform … where we grow from scratch and build from there. That’s the challenge we have been facing all this while.”
Chukwudi, who was skipper of the Eaglets’ squad that won silver behind Switzerland at the 2009 FIFA U17 World Cup, which Nigeria hosted, went on to single out some factors he believes have accounted for the country’s reversal of fortunes at the cadet level.
“It’s because we have not had the structure to develop our youths. If we can do more to develop the structure, I believe we can have better days ahead and regain the success we had in the previous time. I also believe that greater glory lies ahead of us in the future than what we have ever experienced before,” Chukwudi predicted.
