The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) technical committee, has given its thumbs up to Super Eagles coach, Salisu Yusuf, over the 30-man squad he has called up for the African Nations Championship (CHAN) qualifier in August.
Salisu called up four goalkeepers, nine defenders, eight midfielders and nine strikers ahead of the qualifier against Togo or Benin Republic.
Nigeria is seeking to qualify for next year’s tournament in Kenya.
After Monday’s meeting over the list in Abuja, a member of the committee, Paul Bassey, said: “We’re very impressed. It is not easy sieving through 40 players per team from 20 clubs.
“As a technical committee, the coach presented his team and defended it. We shared with him and offered our own ideas and it was up to him to decide.
“We went through the list with him and very happy with what we saw and the selections he made. There is no mandate that he has qualify but we believe the first qualifier he knows he has to qualify. Togo or Benin Republic should not be a problem.
“We’ve not been doing well at the CHAN level and I believe he picked the best and with the caliber of players on the list, we should qualifier for the tournament.
“We found out that we have about six good goalkeepers in the league and it shows how confident we are with the goalkeeper department. He took four though we would have hope for more goalkeepers.
“All, we did was to sit with him and scrutinize the list. God forbid if the CHAN Eagles failed, we will swim with him [Yusuf] because we saw what he presented and know that he did his best.”
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