By Oyediji Oluwaseun Babatunde
Sports Writer, kick442.com Nigeria
President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Amaju Melvin Pinnick says Super Eagles of Nigeria can win the next African Nations Championship (CHAN), a competition organised by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) for home-based players.
After Nigeria’s defeat to back-to-back Champions, Atlas Lions of Morocco in the 2018 edition, the team failed to qualify for the just concluded 2020 edition which was hosted by Cameroon.
Pinnick posited that Super Eagles will have to qualify first as he is optimistic that the team can win the 2022 tournament.
“We take responsibility but we will work religiously and prayerfully in ensuring that we qualify for Algeria. We want to qualify. The last edition before this year’s edition, we were the runners-up. We want to win the tournament.” Pinnick opined during a televised interview on Channels Television asserting that the league is important and linked with the CHAN tournament if Nigeria is to succeed at the tournament.
He said: “We can see that the league has picked up and we are doing very well. Our technical study group is looking at the players. CHAN is very tricky. The moment you see a player that is very good today, he is leaving for abroad the next day. You can not pick him anymore. You have to monitor the young players, look at them as they are growing, and make sure we qualify which is the first thing.”
Nigeria has featured at the African Nations Championship three times. In 2014, they finished third, crashed out of the 2016 edition, before being beaten 4-0 by Morocco in the final of the 2018 edition.
The tournament will be hosted by Algeria in 2022.
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