'Countries of birth never looked for them' - Amokachi questions pedigree of dual nationals, hails Osimhen

Nigeria legend Daniel Amokachi has questioned the pedigree of the current Super Eagles players who were born abroad, claiming that they contributed to Nigeria's failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup and they only opted for the three-time African champions because their countries of birth never wanted them.

Nigeria Football Federation supremo Amaju Pinnick has gone on a recruitment drive that has seen several 'average dual-eligible players' pledge their international futures to Nigeria over their countries they were born.

To put that into perspective, Nigeria were unable to convince Chelsea academy products Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori, and Arsenal wonderkid Bukayo Saka to switch their allegiance from England to Nigeria.

Nigerian-born Villarreal sensation Arnaut Danjuma and Crystal Palace super kid Michael Olise have opted to play international football for the Netherlands and France respectively even though they were courted by Nigeria.

Of the eleven players named in the starting line up in the most recent game against Ghana, as many as six namely Calvin Bassey, William Troost-Ekong, Leon Balogun, Ola Aina, Joe Aribo and Ademola Lookman were born abroad.

"Quality wise we can't take it away from Nigeria. Every day Nigeria is blessed with one immigrant player who is playing out there and he'll always come up and say I turned down my birth country, I want to play for Nigeria, when their country of birth never looked for them. They won't even make their birth nation squads," Amokacho said on SuperSport Naija Made.

"Unfortunately for us Nigeria, we've thrown away our developmental structure which we had that made us to win the 1996 Olympics gold medal, that made that generation so great.

"Stephen Keshi came into play and revived it and we saw how we won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations."

Amokachi singled out a homegrown player, Victor Osimhen for special praise, saying the Napoli striker worked tirelessly to ensure that Nigeria qualified for the World Cup unlike his teammates born abroad.

The 1994 Africa Cup of Nations winner added : "Football in Nigeria and Africa is a religion. If we don't have a player like Osimhen who hawked pure water on Third Mainland bridge, you can see that's the way he plays, he knows what it takes to play for Nigeria. That's why he's running 24/7 to make us win.

"And then you have players who grew up outside the shores of Nigeria that don't know what it takes to wear the national colours in the World Cup, it is different.

"Several of the players have not been to the World Cup, they don't know what it is. 99 percent of those players haven't even felt the Nigerian stadium filled up like the way it was filled up."