Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) secretary-general, Dr Mohammed Sanusi has forward another explanation for the lack of home-based players in the country’s national team, as he says their best players are all plying their trade with overseas clubs, megasportsarena.com reports.
Speaking to Brila FM against the backdrop of only Heartland of Owerri goalkeeper, Ikechukwu Ezenwa making the cut for the Super Eagles’ 23-player list of invitees for last Sunday’s friendly against Brazil in Singapore, Sanusi admitted it would be good to have stars from the domestic league in the main national team, but interjected that the best on the home front keep moving abroad.
He reasoned further that since the national team has to be about picking the best players available to the country at each point in time, it is only logical that the coach in charge would always look to where he can get the ideal choices he needs to execute his game plan.
The NFF scribe acknowledged that it would be good to have a squad filled with players from the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL), which would be a good commentary about the domestic championship, but he added that even clubs on the local scene are losing their most preferred lads to foreign teams due to the lure of cash and ambitious desire for exposure.
Sanusi expatiated: “It would be good to have only home-based players in our national team. For me, either home-based or foreign-based, the best should be the ones in the national team, but the truth is that our best players are based abroad. The reality we are facing is that all good players in the league keep going abroad, which means the Eagles will also rely on those abroad.”
