A renowned former veteran of the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL), Victor Ezeji has opined that the home-based national team’s poor performance at the Championship of African Nations (CHAN 2024) has spoilt the chances of domestic players getting Invitations to the country’s main national team.
With corporate support from Showtime, a leading brand in football development, Sports247 reports that the CHAN Eagles’ earlier 1-0 loss to Senegal and 4-0 defeat by Sudan on Tuesday sent Nigeria out of the championship before their last group match against Congo, and Ezeji described it as a disappointing performance.
The Sharks FC of Port Harcourt legend also took a look at multiple repercussions of the CHAN team’s ouster and declared, “We keep fighting for these boys, but they still make us look stupid.
“At the end of the day, when you want to ask why the home-based players are not included in the main national team, the next thing people will tell you is that the players couldn’t even do well in CHAN.”
However, Ezeji promised that he would not stop making a case for NPFL players in the Super Eagles’ main squad, as he believes some of them are good individually and should not be grouped together with the disappointing ones.
He added, “All the same, we’ll keep advocating for them, because we know there’s no way you won’t see at least one player from the home front … though these boys generally keep disappointing us on the CHAN basis.”
Ezeji, who also had a short stint with Enyimba of Aba and is now a symbolic ambassador for the domestic league, concluded by asserting that this year’s CHAN Eagles’ players appeared loke they were mentality weak to withstand pressure at the continental level.
“For me, I think, mentally, they were not strong. From what I saw in the team, they were not strong enough mentally to prosecute the games.
“Overall, I think it was a very, very poor performance by the team … a very, very poor one!” Ezeji posited with affirmation.
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