Flying Eagles coach Ladan Bosso has explained how he selected his squad list for the WAFU-UFOA Zone B qualifiers for the Africa U-20 Cup of Nations ahead of their opening game against Ivory Coast at Stade Charles de Gaulle, Porto-Novo on Sunday afternoon.

The experienced Nigerian football tactician has picked a 20-man group for the tournament in Republic of Benin with three goalkeepers, six defenders, five midfielders and six strikers included on the roster.

Bosso's squad list reinforces the notion that there is a pathway into the Super Eagles for junior internationals with former Golden Eaglets stars Wisdom Ubani, Peter Olawale and goalkeeper John Amah part of the traveling party to Benin.

A number of players plying their trade in the Nigerian Professional Football League have also been called up after they were scrutinized by the coaches.

"When we started we put up a template, template in the sense that the players we are going to invite must belong to one or two of those catchment areas," Bosso said to NFF TV.

"The first one was those players that played in the last U17 though they did not do so well but they qualified to the World Cup, so that U17 was supposed to be what we call as coaches the foundation team.  

"During friendly matches we do some checks and balances - elimination by substitution. We thank God that those players that played in the last World Cup in Brazil, automatically some of them graduated, we have about three of them in this squad now.

"Then those Academy players that are playing in different academies but have national team experience, some of them played the last U20, the last U17 and are back to their academies. Those that played U23 are still within the range."

Bosso continued : "Another catchment player was those Premier League players that are still within the age of U20, we have to go for them and before that after that doing the paperwork we have to go to LMC to confirm, I got about 32 players playing in the Premier League that are still within the range of U20.

"Another research of these 32, what has been their performances in their clubs and when I confirmed it 17 of them have never featured for their clubs for even one month.

"We have to check again those that played between 10-25 matches in the league before it was put on hold.

"I now got about nine of them so all those nine were called and when they are called, we do checks and balances and we are able to get this team as it is called today the Flying Eagles for this WAFU tournament".

Meanwhile, goalkeeper John Amah will miss the Nigeria U20 opener against Ivory Coast due to an undisclosed injury.

The Flying Eagles players and officials touched down in Cotonou on Saturday evening and nineteen players have been given the all-clear to feature against Ivory Coast following negative COVID-19 tests upon their arrival in Benin.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel