Nigeria’s cadet national team, Golden Eaglets will fly out of Abuja next Thursday, September 19, as they move to Turkey to participate in an invitational competition ahead of this year’s FIFA U-17 World Cup, megasportsarena.com reports.
The competition, which is scheduled to end on September 28, will accord Coach Manu Garba another major preparation point for Brazil 2019, where his team will play their first group match on October 26 against Hungary, before also facing Ecuador and Australia.
The Eaglets, who placed fourth at this year’s U-17 AFCON in Tanzania, will also aim to learn new ideas from the build-up competition in Turkey, as the five-time world champions aim to hit the ground running when they land in Brazil, ahead of the Cadet Mundial’s kick off on October 26.
Ahead of the trip, the Eaglets will this week face another round of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, to detect those eligible for the under-17 cadre, after Garba would have submitted his provisional squad list of 50 players.
The final squad of 21 players will undergo another round of age tests in Brazil before the World Cup begins, well ahead of which Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) will undertake its internal scans at a cost of N105,000 for each player and results could be known within three days.
The last MRI scan involving the Eaglets had decimated the core of the team who won the zonal qualifiers in Niger last year September and thus forced Garba to draft in new players at short notice for the U17 AFCON in Tanzania in April.
An Eaglets’ official told SCORENigeria: “Coach Manu will submit his 50-man provisional squad for the World Cup on Monday or latest Tuesday. It will now be left to the NFF to conduct the MRI scan for the players selected.”
Kelvin Dejiggyman@DeJiggyman
Chimaobi Victor@chimas2010
Samuel Adeosun@samadex1