The handwriting had long been on the wall for the Flying Eagles even during their preparations in Germany for the tournament.
Ranging from agents and state boards lobbying for their players to be included in the team, all sorts of bribery, players unrest and such, the team were never expected to pull up trees at the competition
Below are the things the Nigeria Football Federation must do if they really have the interest of our football at the U-20 level at heart.
1) The technical crew must be disbanded: Paul Aigbogun and his crew has shown all and sundry they are not worth their salts.
It is even appalling to note that the team which finished fourth at the U-20 AFCON early this year just before the World Cup was unarguably better than the one we saw in Poland. Clearly, the management had not done their homework.
2) A new group of players must be built: It will be ridiculous for any of the players that executed this World Cup to think he will be invited to any of the country's senior teams (U-23s and Super Eagles) in the future.
Rightly so, neither of them has shown he deserves to be a fixture in the team and the country's governing body must see to the injection of new committed players to the team, ones who will be passionate when they don the green and not the sorts who even had their ages disputed by a large section of its fanbase.
3) The good team will do better with more quality tune-up games: It must be said that in spite of the substantial friendlies this team had before the World Cup, they still could not showcase their potentials in the tournament.
Their undoing was clearly not a bad preparation, after all they had at least four tune-up games to prepare with just before the competition.
The nub of the tension is that when the country gets a new team, giving them such top notch preparation will be vital to their achieving success in tournaments.
4) Building from the current crop of U-17s is another good option: It is no secret that the Golden Eaglets possess better talents than most of those in the Flying Eagles.
The likes of Samson Tijani, Wisdom Ubani and Akinwumi Amoo could have performed better at this tournament, and thus the NFF must see to it that some of those U-17s make their progression to the team.
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February 20, 2026
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