He told naij.com shortly after the team won the FIFA U17 world cup that the machine cannot be trusted.
Garba Lawal
The 41-year-old 1996 Olympics gold medalist said he knew the team would win the tournament and retain the trophy which was later won back to back:
“They tried I must say and from the beginning of the tournament they knew they had to win their matches and they won all of their games. They did excellent.”
Speaking further, he advised the players to remain focused and be wary of dubious agents out to cheat them:
“they need to be careful. The problem with Nigerian football is partly caused by agents. The agents are dubious sometimes. They are dubious. These agents will make a lot of noise about them saying I want to take you to here or there.
“The boys need to be focused. They need to be careful of these agents because after most of these U-17 World cup out boys are no where to be found in senior teams.They are gone and I keep on asking myself what is happening.
“They start fine but at the end they just disappear and you won’t see them anymore. My concern is that they must get where they are going to have playing time week in and week out,”he added.
Garba Lawal
Reacting to the over-age allegations made against the team by some people, Garba Lawal said we cannot entirely rely on the MRI Scan because it is not reliable:
“You can not talk of overage now because they did MRI. But the MRI is actually the problem. Maybe I am 30 and I passed the MRI. Yes, it happens so many times.”
“So the machine is not useful that much any longer. It is the player and his parents that can tell a player’s true age not the machines.We know the truth.
“I tell you if I come in as an overage player and that tell you my age is 16, there is nothing you can do. So we have to be careful about that so that we don’t blame the players but also the machine.
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