The-Shot.Net Writers Club - OLYMPIC QUALIFIERS: CAMEROON AND NIGERIA OUT!

Whatever contemplation has been behind the CAF planning of the competition, it has had its influence even if old faces had qualified in the end.

All six match dates have been scheduled on weekends not included in the FIFA calender for coordination of club and country fixtures and so many eligible players have been excluded from the qualifiers because of objections by their clubs. What means, the more talented young players a country had active in mainly European professional clubs, the more they had to replace them with second string players for the Olympic qualifiers.

This shifted the emphasis away from trying to have the strongest countries qualified towards giving those other countries a better chance who have fewer talent drain to Europe.

The biggest price paid Côte d'Ivoire, who because of their late 90's success of the ASEC Sifcom academy education has an entire U23 squad playing in European leagues, and where the special Beveren case would have added to the usual problems anyway. Unaware of the problem a few players had travelled to africa for the first match though, only to be punished by their clubs later.

But also the gold medal winners of 1996 and 2000 Nigeria and Cameroun had to try to get through without a lot of possible squad members and eventually failed to qualify at all.
The most prominent names included Nigeria repeatedly trying to call up Inter's Obafemi Martins while Cameroun would have wished to have PSG's Modeste Mbami included. But there were more other professionals playing at various countries who were not allowed to join their squads as well.

This opened a rare chance for a high flying Tunisian team to qualify at the expense of the Nigerians in the direct encounter at Tunis.

It is difficult for smaller countries, even with very good A teams to field a strong youth selection. Normally it is just a problem of the number of talents available in an age slot to have all positions filled with players of equal quality. You hardly find the Netherlands successful in a youth competition while still producing so many talented players over a span of years for a world class A squad.
That might be also the explanation why Tunisia is seldom to find at the top in youth departments while being so successful on the A and club level.
But there can be exceptions as Portugal proves from time to time and Tunisia feel ready to show this year.

Eventually qualified:
Morocco (2.1 against Angola, qualified thanks to Uganda who beat Ethiopia in the parallel match)
Ghana (defeated Zambia 2:0 in the decisive match)
Tunisia (defeated Nigeria 2:0 in the decisive match)
Mali (defeated Cameroon 1:0 in the decisive match)