The Nigeria Football Federation NFF, has dissociated itself from the ongoing speculations that it mandated Super Eagles head coach to arrive at 25 players for the 2023 AFCON npflupdates.com reports.
The NFF through its President Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gusau said it’s not the federation’s choice to leave the Super Eagles AFCON players at 25.
Also read: Peseiro : Super Eagles 2023 AFCON Squad Size Was Determined By The NFF
Recall, npflupdates.com reported José Peseiro said the number(of players) is from the NFF.
“The number is from the Nigeria Football Federation. NFF decided to take 25 players. I agreed, twenty five players is enough to manage. Since the first moment NFF decided to take 25 players,” Peseiro told the Super Eagles media.
“We did a big list of 41 players and these chosen players worked with us until now. The performance in the selection because some players show good performance in the clubs but didn’t show in our national team.”
NFF opens up on Super Eagles 2023 AFCON squad size
On the contrary, the federation in a recent interview with Totorinews said it earlier settled for 23 players. But has to expand the squad size when CAF have room for that; then, it involved the former Sporting CP gaffer.
“We were supposed to name a 23 man squad then CAF later said we can increase the number to 25 or 27 but we will cater for the extra players in the team. At that stage it’s not in the power of the NFF to make a decision so we reached out to the coach and he said he is okay with 25 players because it’s easy for him to manage. That was how we arrived at the number of players for the tournament”, he told Totori news in a video interview.
Also read: AFCON 2023: Uzoho Is Not A Bad Goalkeeper, He’d Come Good – Taribo West
Nigeria will hope to win a fourth African title in Ivory Coast. The three-time African champions share the same Group A with host nation Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.
They’ll kick-start their tournament against Equatorial Guinea on 14 January, at the Alassane Ouattara stadium, Abidjan.
