TWO former Nigeria internationals have been included in one of world football’s most important panels, the game’s law-making body announced today.
Former Super Eagles forward Daniel Amokachi and former Super Falcons striker Mercy Akide-Udoh are two of the newest members of the IFAB Football Advisory Panel, along with five others.
Ex-Arsenal manager Arsenal Wenger is also a new member of the panel.
“Seven new members have been appointed to The IFAB’s Football Advisory Panel: Mercy Akide, Daniel Amokachi, Kay Cossington, Jillian Ellis, Maxwell Scherrer, Arsène Wenger, Lydia Williams,” IFAB tweeted this afternoon.
“Over the next few days, all new members will be presented in detail.”
The International Football Association Board (IFAB) is the body that determines the laws of football.
It is an independent body made up of FIFA and the football associations of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
IFAB was founded in 1886 to agree standardised laws for international competition, and has since acted as the “guardian” of the internationally used laws.
Since its establishment in 1904, FIFA, the sport’s top governing body, has recognised IFAB’s jurisdiction over the laws.
The advisory panel plays a consultative role in IFAB and has an input in all decisions made by the main body.
Amokachi, now 48, played for Nigeria’s senior men’s national team from 1989 when he was 17 to 1998, winning the 1994 Africa Cup of Nations and the 1996 Olympics gold as well as attending two World Cups.
He shot to prominence as a precocious teenager with Ranchers Bees of Kaduna and played professionally in Belgium, Turkey and England, where he won the 1995 FA Cup with Everton.
Akide, now 46, was one of the early superstars of women’s football in Nigeria and Africa.
She was a prolific striker who won three Women’s Africa Cup of Nations titles with the Super Falcons, attended three FIFA Women’s World Cups with the team and is a former African Women’s Player of the Year winner.
She is based in the United States of America where she has been coaching since 2006.
