People said the same about Kelechi 2 years ago.There are some real deals among those Nigeria and Mali players.
Agree about Nacho, huge talent but hasn't Nigeria won the U17 World Cup like 5 times or something? If so then something must be going wrong for them going forward as there senior team doesn't seem to match the junior teams success ( talking about World Cups, not African Cup of Nations ).
It's up to people to watch the players and separate the real deals from the averages.Both Nigeria and Mali have some real talents, would be unfair to group them together with the big lumps.Obviously results at youth level are normally strongly impacted by how physically (in this case) or tactically developed a team is.It's a well-known fact, no need to keep reiterate about.
I dont think there is an age fraud. Its all about the shit mentality that Africans have. Money, money, money.
Sorry, I'm not accusing anyone of age fraud but just simply interested in the fact that they have done so well at junior level but the transition from juniors to seniors doesn't develop into a team that challenges for the World Cup which in theory after winning so many Youth World cups you would think they would be doing well.
Easy. Lack of a strong domestic league, lack of infrastructure/facilities and lack of a competent, well-organized FA.
Nigeria U17s record WC. 66-45-10-6. GD of over +100. 8th final in 11 appearances for them. Hard to know how to analyse it really.
Yeah, fair point with regard to a strong domestic league but if your infrastructure ( including coaching ) and facilities are not up to it, how do you produce good talents at this age to begin with?
I'll answer your question partly with another question. Why is it that inner city USA disproportionately produces the most talented basketball players? Culture. Young kids(especially poor kids, and there are a lot of them) in Nigeria play the game wherever and whenever they can, usually without any adults involved. Goals are usually made with two stones set about two feet apart. The emphasis is on self expression and invention. Nigeria also has a large population of about 180M, so that is a lot of kids playing soccer, honing their soccer skills day in and day out. The result is large numbers of kids with raw soccer skills, but not so much tactical awareness. The latter becomes much more important as they age, and that is where Nigerian football's general lack of organization and facilities do us in at the senior level. Having said that, in the past few years the NFF (Nigerian FA) has actually done a commendable job of organizing a decent U13 national academy, and it is slowly bearing fruit. A good chunk of the last Nigerian U17 team passed through this academy and have ended up at quite respectable clubs (Iheanacho @ City, Yahaya @ Spurs, Awoniyi @ Liverpool, Success @ Granada, etc).
There is plenty of raw talent in Nigeria. The comparison to inner city USA is not really appropriate though, as the rest of the world has just as many population centres and popularity of the sport, there's nothing particularly unique about Nigeria there. The real ages in the past were a serious problem, however as long as the bone scanning is still being applied rigorously then can't query that.
I think it is. The three characteristics common to inner city USA (much more so in the past 30 years) and much of Nigeria is a large population of poor kids, lots of leisure time and a single overwhelmingly popular sport. Any part of the world in which these three prerequisites are satisfied, for any sport, you usually find a lot of talent coming out of there. The Dominican Republic with respect to baseball, and Brazil with respect to football immediately come to mind. Nowhere did I claim Nigeria was unique in that regard.
Out of interest, how would our inner city areas compare to those in the USA? I thought it would be about the same but from what you're saying it seems that they might be poorer.
I don't know that much about inner cities in Britain, but my hunch is that the poverty there is not as extensive and persistent as that in the USA. Several reasons for this could be due to sheer population size where you don't have large concentrated populations of poor people, the more comprehensive British social safety net, better access to education, etc.
Has more to do with the fact that it's the only stage of development when the average Nigerian player is (structurally) at a level playing ground with the rest of the world, as in they're not pros yet. Just look at the clubs our U17 players are playing for, it's akin to England showing up with a bunch of Nike Academy players. The tournament might be very beneficial for the likes of Osimhen & Nwakali, but for the rest that might not have shone as brightly as them, they'll be going on trials upon trials to secure a contract somewhere in Europe. Just look at the majority of the 2013 set.
The thing is though, when a country is prosperous enough to have a massive footballing infrastructure, it's also so prosperous that kids aren't spending all day out playing football with their mates in the first place. It's for this reason that the USA would probably do brilliantly well if they embraced football, not just because of the money and population size, but because of the gross wealth inequality over there too.