Head coach of the Nigeria U16 team (Future Eagles), Haruna Ilerika, has stated that his boys’ participation in the Dream Cup Invitational tournament is to assess their level of development and progression.
The Eagles arrived in Japan on Monday night after a hectic journey that saw them journey through Ethiopia and South Korea before getting to their destination.
Haruna, who spoke to NFF Media, said the Nigeria Football Federation has not given them any target(s), but they are keen to see the level of the boys against their counterparts from other nations.
“We are here for an invitational tournament. Basically, the essence of the tournament is to create friendship and the level of development. The Federation has not put any hard task on us, what they want to see is our level of development and the level of progression; to see those that can transit from one level to the other.
“For any coach and player, winning is very key. We want to have an achievement, we want to have success and it is very key to the nation as a whole. But it will not go in contrary to the expectation. What we are looking at at this stage is how are these boys developing and how is the nation’s football developing.
Despite no expectation from the NFF, Ilerika hopes to make a better impact this time around, having led the side to a third-place finish four years ago.
“We want to make sure we try our best to be able to get some of the boys that can move to go and play in the next U17. We were here in 2019 and we came third. This time around we want to see how we can win all our games and be happy with ourselves,” he concluded.
The tournament will feature Netherlands, Nigeria, USA, and hosts Japan. The Eagles will face the Dutch side on the 31st of May, before slugging it out with the hosts on the 2nd of June and then finish up against the USA two days later.
