As Nigeria U-23 team prepare to take on Morocco in a London Olympic qualification match on Saturday (today) in Casablanca, OLUFEMI ATOYEBI writes on the many battles of coach Austin Eguavoen to prepare the team.Nigeria U-23 team will on Saturday (today) begin their journey to the London 2012 Olympics when they take on host of the games qualifying competition, Morocco, in Casablanca.Coach of the Nigerian side, Austin Eguavoen had earlier cried out that his team is depleted, owing to the insistence of European clubs not to release their Nigerian players for the competition, which is not on FIFA calendar.But added to the headache are the antics of the hosts to frustrate the Nigerian side, seen as a major hurdle to other participants.The eight teams are divided into two groups of four teams, with Nigeria in group A with Morocco, Algeria and Senegal. The second group has Egypt, Gabon, South Africa and Cote dIvoire. Three teams will grab automatic ticket to London with the fourth team playing a play-off against a team from Asian Football Confederation. According to CAF regulation for the championship, which is taking place for the first time, the first two teams from each group will make the semifinals with finalist making it to London. A third place match between the teams that lose in the semifinal will decide the final slot.A former national team player, Dimeji Lawal, says Nigeria will have no excuse if they fail in Morocco, stressing that every team that aspires to succeed must prepare for the challenges ahead.He said, "I think we should stop complaining and face the competition ahead. I am not in Morocco so I dont know the extent of the hostility they are talking about. In my days as a footballer, we faced tough challenges in foreign land and still succeeded. It is expected that hosts always come out with funny measures especially against teams they consider as great rivals. "The drama playing itself out in Morocco shows that the hosts are afraid to face Nigeria, we should not be distracted by their method of destabilising us. We are still the favourites in that team."Lawal queried the insistence of Eguavoen that he did not reach Morocco with his best players, adding that Nigeria is gradually killing the future of some young players.'"We keep telling them that they should start using home-based players for matches like this but the handlers prefer calling on foreign-based players. We can only add one or two foreign-based players in areas where we have problems getting quality home-based players. All the age group teams are opportunity to develop the young boys at home, but they are not getting the opportunity, meaning that they will all run away to play in small clubs just to be called professional players."Sports marketer Godwin Dudu-Orumen agrees with Lawal, highlighting the nations loss for not taking part in big competitions."It is still unfortunate that we use foreign-based players for FIFA developmental projects when we should have helped those boys who play in the Nigerian league to grow," he said."For the U-23 team, there is an opportunity for three players that are more than 23 years to be included. For not going to the Nations Cup, we are going to lose billions of naira. Think of how much advertisers would have spent to congratulate the team on the pages of newspapers and electronic media, the amount telecommunication companies would have given the team to prepare and the money that would have come directly from the organisers. We waste money in Nigeria in search of glory when we should have made so much for doing the right thing."
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