'Where is Ziyech?' - Pinnick insists no player is indispensable using example of Chelsea's Moroccan star

The Nigeria Football Federation want the incoming Super Eagles coach to give chances to players in the Nigeria Professional League, according to Amaju Pinnick.

Of the 28 players named on the Egypt roster for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, as many as 22 were playing in their domestic championship, with Al Ahly and Zamalek contributing majority of the players.

Using the example of Chelsea's Moroccan winger Hakim Ziyech, the Nigerian Federation boss underlined that no player is indispensable whether or not he's playing for a top European club.

Morocco manager Vahid Halilhodzic omitted Ziyech from his 2021 AFCON roster for non-footballing reasons and in March the Chelsea star rejected a call-up to feature in the 2022 World Cup playoff versus Democratic Republic of Congo.

Speaking on Arise News, Pinnick stated : "Some of our boys at home are doing very well, we just hired a scout that's submitting names of very fantastic players in the local league.

"It's football, 11v11, the Egyptian national team when they came to the Nations Cup they had only six players based abroad, all the rest were their home-based players.

"Morocco as well, where is Ziyech, the boy in Chelsea said he's bigger than his country, his country has qualified for World Cup now.

"Eric Cantona and Ginola in 1998 said without them France is nothing, what happened? France won the World Cup.

"Aimé Jacquet went to the World Cup with Thierry Henry, with Pires, with those players, Laurent Blanc. At the end of the day they won the World Cup, so there's nobody that's indispensable.

"I told them in our Executive Committee meeting, are we going to have a percentage of home-based players in any of the Super Eagles lineup? Is it going to be part of the contract of the coach?

"They should look deeply into it because we also need to develop it."

The Super Eagles, with six players born abroad, were unable to qualify for the 2022 World Cup after they were eliminated via the away goal by Ghana in last month's playoff.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel