Bosso Denies Report He Rejected Bribe Money From Agent
Flying Eagles’ Head Coach, Isah Ladan Bosso has denied a report in a section of the media that he granted an interview in which he claimed to have rejected the sum of €100,000 offered by a football agent to have the latter’s player in the Nigeria U20 squad.
The report claimed that Bosso, who tinkered with the Nigeria intermediate team to win the WAFU B U20 Championship in Niger Republic last year and will lead them to the Africa U20 Cup of Nations starting in Egypt next month, made a statement to the effect that he had refused the amount offered by a certain overseas-based football agent.
In a statement released by the Nigeria Football Federation Bosso said:
“Please permit me to clear the air on this news making the rounds about me rejecting an amount of money from a football agent. I never made such a claim to any journalist, talk less of it in a formal interview. There was no time I made such a statement to either a journalist or any other person for that matter. If anyone has proof of my making such a statement, the person should come out and tender it in public.
“At the moment, I am focused on ensuring the Flying Eagles prepare very well and we are able to pick the very best legs to represent Nigeria at the Africa U20 Cup of Nations in Egypt. We surely can do without such distractions.”
Bosso also shed more light on the number of players invited to camp for the final phase of preparations ahead of the U20 tournament.
“I have also read somewhere that we have 65 players in the camp; this is an outright falsehood. There’s no way we can have that bogus number in the camp. We resumed with 35 players in the camp and that is the number we have for now. Working with my assistants, we will start to trim the squad once the overseas-based professionals start arriving in camp.”
The veteran trainer also called on stakeholders to rally around and support the Flying Eagles as the team embarks on the mission to conquer Africa for the eighth time. “I am calling on all critical stakeholders including the media to rally around and support this team. We need no distractions at this point; all we need is the support of everyone in our quest to qualify for the FIFA World Cup finals in Indonesia.”