The Nigeria u17 Team is the most successful team in the tournament’s history, with five titles and three runners-up. Brazil is the second-most successful with four titles and two runners-up. Ghana and Mexico have each won the tournament twice, Despite being one of the top youth countries in the world, when was the last time they qualified or did well in the category?
A lot of unseeing hidden factors are killing our football development in Nigeria, although political instability and governance issues are major challenges to Nigeria’s football development. Frequent changes in government often lead to policy inconsistency, affecting long-term development plans. Corruption is another significant issue, but there are others such as
Selection of players based on federal character, godfatherism, and favoritism, rather than on merit and performance.
Rotation of football coaches across all age categories
Transfer of interest like in the olden days, the interests of the majority were in the local team, not now when everybody is crazy about foreign teams.
No team performance analysts across any of the national teams
Most parents don’t see football as a profession. They see it as a wasting of time, which is not like that in the developing world. Just tell me how profession pay, like football.
There is no age grade developmental program like in most developed countries. There are leagues for age grades from u10 to senior categories which are not like in Nigeria and there is a time in Nigeria, in particular, Ibadan Liberty Stadium, where the NFF u12 tournament was organized to develop young people, but after the first edition, the tournament was stopped.
Recycling players who are already past their prime, yet claiming to be young and energetic, making it almost impossible for genuine young talents to emerge and fill the gap.
The killing of school games across the nation and putting a stop to the primary school game really damaged our development stage, our development stage a lot.
Poor motivation for the grassroots clubs and coaches. At least if grants did not come from the grassroots, they should make it compulsory for local government to coach employees in local government.
Turning most of the school field into a house. In the country now, most of the old school fields have started turning into houses.
The influence of social media and the way in which the majority of young people use social media really affects the development of games in the country.
