Flying Eagles have been flying through the previous games without seemingly encountering any turbulence at any point, but all of this had to come to an unfortunate end. The Senegalese ended up grounding the Eagles and costing them the game that they had needed so much to keep coasting through the championship.
After their first painful loss in the game against Mali, Nigeria needed to remain victorious, or at least at a tie with some of their opponents, throughout most of the games in order to remain in the championship. It had managed to do so until the very point when they went up against Senegal. Even the best betting tips were unable to predict the full extent of the pain of loss and being left out of continuing in the championship.
A team with a history of making it to the finals that hoped to be able to make it to the end one more time. Yet, the game was not to be won this time around. While some fans around the country are already thinking of the coming championships and hoping for the best outcome for those, a large majority of the fans within the country are considering the loss to be the fault of the coach.
The fans’ thoughts
The moment that the team lost the first time around was when the fans started grumbling about the U20 team that was assembled by the coach, believing that better decisions could have been made if the coach had been smarter in his choices. Paul Aigbogun initially dismissed these grumblings and concerns and seemingly justifiably so, as the team went on to win a number of games over the next few weeks.
Yet, with the arrival of the game of Senegal, the concerns of the fans were proven right. The team is now out of the championship and has to reconsider a number of decisions that have been made, while U20 World Championship goes on.
The U20 World Cup
The U20 World Cup was to be the most exciting football event of the year for the Nigerian team. They were close enough to be considered for entering the quarterfinals, but it seems being qualified does not mean being able to participate. The U20 Championship in Qatar is instead going to continue hosting Senegal and see how far the team can go in comparing to the rest of the world’s most talented football players under 20 years old.
To the fans of the Nigerian team, the loss was doubly disappointing – they hoped that the team was going to be top of the line not simply because the team would have had the chance to win, but also because this would have been the chance for some of the best Nigerian players to get recruited by international clubs.
So, when the team lost, the Nigerians saw the sliver of the possibility of seeing some of their own countrymen play for some of the biggest clubs in the world get slimmer and almost disappear, as they now do not have the chance to showcase their skill and ability on the continental stage.
This is why the coach of the team is being hounded for making bad decisions – they believe that picking the right team would have been able to give the team not only a chance to see the championship through but also would have resulted in recruitment deals. Now, the only way this is going to happen is if the recruiters try to pay close attention to the Nigerian football teams.
2 Comments
Too bad! NFF, stop pretending. Pay them their money. Flying Eagles worked for it. They have family like you. Good or bad, they have tried their best. EFCC is fake. They are just working for the government. Nothing is working in this Country. EFCC should do their job in over the NFF if truly they are real.
There’s corruption everywhere in Country. Why are we living in this kind of situation? Next level indeed. Hmm…. it is well by God’s grace.
The Nigeria Football Federation have threatened to blacklist the protesting Flying Eagles players from the national teams, according to reports.
Shortly after the team crashed out of the tournament in Poland, they started protesting the nonpayment of their entitlements since the start of preparations for the World Cup and missed their flight back to Nigeria on Tuesday.
The Nigeria Football Federation have not paid the players their camp allowances and winning bonus for qualifying to the round of sixteen of the World Cup and the sum is around US$5,000 per player.
”We know that we will not be paid by the NFF on our return home even after they asked for our bank details,” one of the players told scorenigeria.com.ng.
”Can you imagine that those players who were dropped in Germany were only given $100 each to take home.
”And our case is not going to be different, but we will leave everything to God. The almighty will fight our battles.”
Another player added : ”They threatened us, saying we should play for our careers and our families, that money should not distract us.
”Some of the officials even told us that if we insist on this protest, we will be blacklisted from any national team going forward.”
Nigeria started their campaign at the FIFA U20 World Cup on a bright note, thrashing Qatar 4-0 but failed to win their last three matches against United States, Ukraine and Senegal.
God bless Nigeria!!!
Too bad! NFF, stop pretending. Pay them their money. Flying Eagles worked for it. They have family like you. Good or bad, they have tried their best. EFCC is fake. They are just working for the government. Nothing is working in this Country. EFCC should do their job over the NFF if truly they are real.
There’s corruption everywhere in the Country. Why are we living in this kind of situation? Next level indeed. Hmm…. it is well by God’s grace.
The Nigeria Football Federation have threatened to blacklist the protesting Flying Eagles players from the national teams, according to reports.
Shortly after the team crashed out of the tournament in Poland, they started protesting the nonpayment of their entitlements since the start of preparations for the World Cup and missed their flight back to Nigeria on Tuesday.
The Nigeria Football Federation have not paid the players their camp allowances and winning bonus for qualifying to the round of sixteen of the World Cup and the sum is around US$5,000 per player.
”We know that we will not be paid by the NFF on our return home even after they asked for our bank details,” one of the players told scorenigeria.com.ng.
”Can you imagine that those players who were dropped in Germany were only given $100 each to take home.
”And our case is not going to be different, but we will leave everything to God. The almighty will fight our battles.”
Another player added : ”They threatened us, saying we should play for our careers and our families, that money should not distract us.
”Some of the officials even told us that if we insist on this protest, we will be blacklisted from any national team going forward.”
Nigeria started their campaign at the FIFA U20 World Cup on a bright note, thrashing Qatar 4-0 but failed to win their last three matches against United States, Ukraine and Senegal.
God bless Nigeria!!!