Super Eagles coach, Sunday Oliseh, has insisted that only players playing regularly for top divisions in recognised leagues will be invited to play for the senior national team.
This declaration has generated a lot of heat as many believe very few Nigerian players play for top clubs in top leagues, while others believe his criteria will block gifted players in lower divisions in Europe from featuring for the Super Eagles.
“At the moment there has been a lot of talk as regards the fact that we have decided that first division players are the players that we found eligible to serve our country,” Oliseh said.
“We feel the best has to play for us and the best in any country play in the first division.
“Of course there could be some exceptions, we have players who are excellent in the second division but the basis of our decision is this: the best players in the first division are used to a certain level, tempo and competition standard because that is what the competition entails.
“And for that reason, we need the best that are used to playing at this tempo to serve and play for Nigeria.”
However, he gave exceptions to players who have excelled with the national youth teams as well as regular Super Eagles players whose teams may have been relegated and denied the opportunity to move to top division sides.
“A player who has excelled for Nigeria at top level, who has won titles for Nigeria and who we feel is at the top of his [career], if in the future due to no fault of his, his team falls down to the second level and his club refuses to sell him, keeping the player tied down, these are players that we have to look upon and decide the shape they are in and eventually may make exceptions to,” he continued.
“But at the moment, we stand firm because we feel that the best has to play for Nigeria.”
Oliseh expects that his team will soon take shape as Nigeria prepare to face Tanzania in their second game of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in September.
“At the moment we are assembling a team, in fact we are trying to start from scratch and getting players that we feel are the best for the style we want to play,” the 40-year-old said.
“We have split our search into two phases: the phase of the home-based and the phase of the foreign-based ones.
“At the moment we have visited some players in their clubs, even watched them play and we have made contact with several of the potential players that we hope to assemble as we play our first qualifier versus Tanzania.
“We hope to start training in mid-August and then round it up before traveling to play Tanzania,” he concluded.
