Salisu Yusuf and his coaching crew are in a race against time to assemble a team for the first-leg of Nigeria’s CAF U23 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Guinea, after a routine Player’s document verification exercise revealed massive discrepancies.
As many as 16 players were cut from the squad strength of 30, all of whom were already in the U23 Eagles camp for a week.
While full details of the verification exercise is yet to be published, FL gathered that Salisu Yusuf and some team officials who visited the NFF secretariat for briefing were told, some of the players had multiple birth dates, and bio-data information on documents submitted including driver’s license and Voter’s card showed age falsification.
Federation officials also made use of the Transfer Matching System, a global data base for all registered professional footballers.
Nigeria’s home game against Guinea is scheduled for March 22 in Abuja, while the return leg comes up March 28.
