Onazi welcomes Nations Cup changes

Super Eagles star Ogenyi Onazi has expressed his support for the resolutions adopted at the Confederations of African Football (CAF) symposium last Thursday in Morocco.

The continental football body made changes to Africa’s flagship tournament, the Cup of Nations, regarding the calendar of the biennial event and the number of participating nations.

Onazi said moving the tournament from its usual January/February date to June/July will ease the pressure on European clubs and their African stars.

“When you finish a [Nations Cup] game and if you finish before the finals, your [club] team has to give you a phone call and you need to come back immediately,” Onazi told BBC.

“Even when we won the Afcon in 2013, my team called me immediately, saying that I should fly from South Africa down to the club because we have a Europa League game.

“I told them it’s not possible because we’d just won the tournament. I needed to go back to my country and try to see what we were going to do there – and then I’d come back,” Onazi said.

Read Also: CAF passes resolution for 24-team AFCON to begin in 2019

The 24-year old, who played a key role in helping Nigeria lift the trophy four years ago, says the new changes will also take away any uncertainty surrounding the availability of players.

“I’ve heard about experiences of other players too – they [clubs] don’t allow them to come.

“They just tell them when it’s like two to three days to the tournament and then they allow them to come – and this has been the difficulty,” Onazi added.

At the symposium, CAF also resolved to expand the tournament from 16 teams to 24 teams, with all changes to begin in 2019 in Cameroon. Onazi also backs this.

“It’s another good innovation for some of those African countries that were not able to make it while it was 16 [teams] or so,” Onazi explained.

“Now they’ll have the opportunity to exhibit themselves because you never can tell…a little country will have some great talents but because they are not able to make it to the 16 you are not able to see those talents.

“But now they have an opportunity to come in, and for me it’s also good for their own development.”

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