Eric Chelle is After Ethan Nwaneri and It's Already in the Press

[Bell]

THEY CAN TRY, BUT...I don't expect them to lure the young man to play for Nigeria. Nwaneri probably considers himself good enough to play for England so will wait for his England call.

You're right. Nigeria goes on these wild goose chases instead of expending the same resources to find more of such players locally.
Bell

Exactly, we have such players locally if we are paying attention to better scouting. And once discovered before they are allowed to go out and be bought by Europe, they can play just a friendly for Nigeria that way even if any European country wants to use them, it now too late to do so !!

In our country with a population of 230 million, there are brimming talents from all over who can be sought after if the right efforts is put into scouting !!
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CAUTION! You are about to enter the No Spin Zone !!

Tiff n Dash, I see you haven’t changed much. Where in Nigeria do you know of a player better than Nwaneri? Is that player at Niger Tornadoes or Yum Yum?

I'M CONFIDENT...with a huge population, there's MORE THAN ONE Nwanweri studying in a secondary school library (not a bad thing) or hawking wares in the streets today. There are Saka's all over the place doing Uber rounds. But how do they become known if you don't have a method in place for unearthing and developing them with the focus misdirected at Europe?
Bell

Population size has nothing to do with talent availability. Much much smaller countries deal with us on a regular basis, Zim, CAR , Croatia, Sweden and CIV to name few. We have to make a decision and stick with it. Do we want to create the best possible team that can challenge for the WC or want to use the SE as a testing ground for players want to sell.

To challenge for the WC you’ll need your core players to be in the top 1% of players in their position, the very best of the best. In actuality, there’re more brain surgeons in Nigeria than world class football players, same with most countries. You cannot pick them up at libraries and secondary schools and expect them to be as good as Nwaneri is at his age. Nwaneri has a lifetime of football education , he has been groomed for years. We don’t have such opportunities.

CORRECT...Nwaneri has had a lifetime of football education which is exactly what we are asking the NFF to do for Nigerian kids. Oh yes, population can be a major factor. Simple statistics prove that: the bigger the sample size, the greater the likelihood of finding what you are looking for. The countries you mentioned are able to compete with Nigeria because those in charge in Nigeria do not know how to exploit their advantage. You can break Nigeria into four regions and build a team each that can compete with those countries. BTW, Nwaneri is not the ultimate goal - Nigeria can and should be aiming for better.
Bell

Pls tell us 1 country that has a large talent pool because of its population that’s doing better than smaller countries. China and India have 2b + people but they’re irrelevant in football. Indinesia , Bangladesh, and Pakistan also have similar populations size and they’re worse. Brazil is the only comparable country to Nigeria in terms of population and we’re about 50yrs behind them in all aspects of life. It’s not about how many chickens payed eggs. It’s about how many eggs hatched.

OF COURSE...no one is saying merely having a large population is all it takes to win the WC. Factors such as the sports culture, technology, wealth, etc, have to be considered. That is why no one is expecting Fiji or Lichtenstein to win it. Nigeria has the population but is seriously short in the other factors I mentioned.
Bell