Poor talent discovery, weak structures driving Nigeria’s football crisis – Awogu

Nigeria’s football decline is no longer limited to poor results at the senior level, with inadequate talent discovery, weak player management and structural deficiencies increasingly undermining the country’s teams across age groups.

The Super Eagles have missed two consecutive FIFA World Cups, while the Super Falcons will not feature at the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Nigeria’s U17 and U20 teams have also suffered setbacks in their respective World Cup qualification campaigns.

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Felix Awogu, General Manager, SuperSport West Africa and a seasoned football analyst, said the crisis reflects a deeper failure to identify, develop and properly utilise the country’s football talent.

In an interview with BusinessDay, Awogu argued that Nigeria continues to produce talented players but lacks an effective system for discovering and managing them from the grassroots to the senior national teams.

“We don’t have the proper talent management and talent discovery in the system. And even when you have talents, do we know how to deploy them and when to deploy them? These are some of the issues,” Awogu said.

He pointed to the success of other African nations as evidence that a deliberate approach to integrating young players into senior teams can produce results.

“If you look at Cameroon, the female team that won the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON), some of those players just came out from the under-20s. Cameroon, for years, was struggling,” he said.

“Football is about energy. It’s about space. It’s about talent management. They deployed their young…