Five of the 35 invited players to the Super Eagles B camp ahead of next month’s 2024 CHAN tournament have been declared ineligible after moving out of the country to sign for other clubs.
The five players are Papa Daniel Mustapha, Waliu Ojetoye, Savour Isaac, Abubakar Sadiq and Philip Adejo.
They were declared ineligible by the Nigeria Football Federation, days after the team’s camp opened in Ikenne, Ogun State.
Some of them featured prominently during the qualifiers against Ghana last year.
While 28 players have reported to camp as of Wednesday, the NFF also noted the absence of two other players.
The eighth CHAN tournament is taking place in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda between August 2 and 20.
Ahead of the tournament, head coach Eric Chelle had invited an initial 35 players to camp, and they began training on Monday with 21 players. Five more players arrived on Tuesday to take the number to 26, while 28 players trained on Wednesday morning.
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It remains to be seen if coach Chelle will call up five new players to replace the ineligible stars.
Nigeria, the 2018 runners-up, are in Group D of the 19-team tournament, alongside cup holders Senegal, and are joined by Sudan and Congo.
The Super Eagles B will play their first two matches of the competition, against Senegal and Sudan, at the Amman Stadium on the island of Zanzibar, Tanzania, before taking on Congo at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in Dar es Salaam.
Nigeria has never won the tournament, having finished third at the 2014 edition in South Africa before losing the final against hosts Morocco four years later.
(Editor: Paul Akhagbemhe)
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