The decision of head coach of the Nigeria U20 team Ladan Bosso to leave out Gent striker Ahmed Abdullahi from his squad for the U20 World Cup has raised more questions than answers from those who have been following the team.
Abdullahi was a part of the team to the WAFU tournament, where he scored twice before sustaining a head injury in the semi final, which ruled him out of the final of the tournament. He returned to the team for the U20 Africa Cup of Nations.
At the AFCON, he scored once and it was in the third place match against Tunisia but that came after he got sent off in the opening game of the tournament and also missed the crucial penalty that would have dragged the semi final game against Gambia into extra time.
In Bosso’s list of players for the World Cup in Argentina, the Gent forward was conspicuously missing and Bosso was asked the rationale behind his decision and he wasted no time he laying bare his decision not to take the 18 year old to the world cup.
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‘It’s a mistake he would not want to repeat. He was one of the disappointments we had and I don’t want to repeat such mistakes,” he said.
“Ahmed was the only player that joined us over there and from the look of things, his fitness level was very very low compared to the other players we took and that was the genesis of that his red card in the first match”, he explained.
He said the fear over a repeat is why he is having second thoughts about including Inter Milan midfielder Ebenezer Akinsanmiro in his final list for the tournament with his club insisting on keeping him until a week to the start of the tournament.
“And, of course, from the players we have invited, Ebenezer, a good player, could have been important to us but the club says they can only release him on the 15th and that is not good for us,” Bosso concluded.
Waziri Damian