A member of Nigeria’s historic winning squad at the 1993 FIFA U17 World Cup in Japan, Festus Odini has advocated a return to two years of extensive camping that the Golden Eaglets enjoyed during his time, in order for them to regain lost glory.
Sports247 reports that the Eaglets have a record of five conquests of the most junior World Cup – with victories at China ’83, Japan ’93, Korea 2007, UAE 2013 and Chile 2015 – but they will miss the next edition of the Cadet Mundial, just as they were not present at the last one.
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Meanwhile, speaking against the backdrop of Morocco’s conquest of this year’s African U17 Cup of Nations with victory over Mali via penalties on Saturday, Odini reckoned that Nigeria’s presence at the competition could have spelt a different story for the North Africans.
However, with the Eaglets missing out due to their inability to qualify from the WAFU B qualifiers, whose tickets were taken by Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire, Odini is now calling for a thorough review of Nigeria’s present scenario in order to find answers to several problematic questions.
Odini, who grew up in Ketu area of Lagos and shot to limelight with VIP Professionals FC, opined: “Our template is not right. When the foundation is wrong, there is nothing you can do. We’ve not put in the right foundation for the recent teams. So, we have to go back and restructure the foundation. We have to restructure it by going back to the grassroots.”
The fair-skinned and petit former attacker, who was a super-sub in Coach Fanny Amun’s all-conquering squad of Japan ’93, added that Nigeria still has a lot of talents to pool from in building another glorious Eaglets’ squad, but he went on to infer that insufficient preparations have affected the cadet team in recent time.
“The talents are there. I always emphasize that the talents are there. So, what are we doing wrong, and why are we not getting results? We must look into that. What is it now that we are doing wrong and is affecting our talents? This is the same country that won the World Cup when we were there. So, what are we now doing wrong?
“We can get it right, because the talents are still there. Let’s go back to what we used to do. I remember we were camping for like two years … building, building, building … and we won the World Cup. We can do that again, and I believe we will get there,” Odini projected.
