NFF splashes Flying Eagles pay by 50 per cent as Eguavoen invites more players for CHAN Eagles
The Flying Eagles may have retained their WAFU B U20 championship courtesy of a deserved 3-1 win over arch-rivals Ghana, but their reward was a massive pay cut.
According to SCORENigeria, the team have now been paid their outstanding camp allowances, which were slashed by as much as 50%.
Both players and officials were disappointed by this development.
The consolation for the team is that many well-meaning Nigerians rallied around the team and contributed cash to motivate them to be the champions again for the sub-region.
The Flying Eagles and beaten finalists Ghana have qualified for the U20 AFCON to be hosted by South Africa in January 2025.
The U20 AFCON will produce four African representatives for the 2025 FIFA U20 World Cup in Chile from September.
Elsewhere, Super Eagles interim handler Augustine Eguavoen says more players will be called up to the team, preparatory to their two-legged Africa Nations Championship qualifying fixture against Ghana.
“This is not the final squad. There are some players we are still looking at. We have a pool of a lot of players. Next week, some will come back, and others will not. We will try to come up with a formidable team in the end,” he said.
The technical director of the Nigeria Football Federation made the disclosure hours after he expressed satisfaction with the quality the players displayed in their first set of training sessions before embarking on a short break on Thursday.
“Very impressive, only two training sessions, but you can see that technically they are very good,” Eguavoen said, per NFF TV.
“We still have a lot of work to do because they are coming from different clubs. We have to try to see how we can blend them into one unit.”
Eguavoen initially independently called up 35 players to the Abuja camp, and the team had their first training session on Wednesday.
Nigeria will trade tackles with Ghana in the first leg between 20th-22nd December 20 and 22, 2024, while the return leg will be held in Nigeria a week later.
The winner over two legs will automatically qualify for the 2025 CHAN, which will be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
