California-born Nigeria and Houston Dash defender Michelle Alozie says the presence of the many dual-national players in the Super Falcons squad in their Women's Africa Cup of Nations victory was crucial.
The NWSL veteran is one of several players in the evolving Falcons side who could have represented another nation at senior level, with the current squad reflective of a modern Nigerian identity which transcends the country's physical borders.
Fellow defender Ashleigh Plumptre and forward Rinsola Babajide were born in England, WAFCON hero Esther Okoronkwo was raised in Texas, Toni Payne and Ifeoma Onumonu are United States-born, and midfielder Jennifer Echegini lived in the Netherlands until she was 11.
Their presence has given a new complexity to this Super Falcons side, with Justin Mudugu effectively moulding a squad that represents various sporting and footballing traditions and cultures encountered across the Nigerian diaspora.
"There are many players on this team who have dual nationalities, and I think that's amazing," Alozie told ESPN. "It's important for us to show up for Nigerians in the diaspora and give them a platform to hopefully play for the Super Falcons as well.
"I think it's important to integrate all Nigerian-descent [players] into the Super Falcons team," she added.
"We bring so many different attributes, and so do the Nigeria-based players. It's fun to just mesh all together and create an amazing Super Falcons squad."
The process of opening the Super Falcons' doors more widely to players from the diaspora has accelerated dramatically over the last decade. None of the squads that won the title in 2016 or 2018 were born outside the West African country, but the team began to change significantly under US coach Randy Waldrum.
Plumptre, Payne, Onumonu, and Alozie were present in the squad three years ago, as well as US-born duo Yewande Balogun and Nicole Payne, while Okoronkwo and Echegini had made their debuts for the national side before the last WAFCON.
No longer are the Super Falcons purely inspiring girls in Lagos, Port Harcourt or Kano, but also touching Nigeria-origin youngsters in Amsterdam, Liverpool or La Jolla, with Echegini making the point in a recent interview with CAF.
"Every journey is unique, I'm Nigerian, but I wasn't born in Nigeria, I grew up in the Netherlands, in the UK, spent time in the US," she began.
"My story is different from some of my teammates who grew up in Lagos or Abuja, but that's the point: no matter where you come from, the path may be different, but the destination can be the same."
For Alozie, she has returned to the United States, to her club side Houston Dash, and to her part-time work as a cancer researcher and research technician at the Texas Children's Hospital.
The fullback, who obtained a bachelors degree in Molecular Biology from Yale University, has acknowledged that the current climate in the United States -- following health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr's decision to oversee budget cuts to research and staffing -- has made the future for the other side of her passion, medicine, more uncertain.
"The budget cuts in the United States towards cancer research are really disheartening," she noted. "It's unfortunate, especially in Paediatric Oncology, let alone Acute Myeloid Leukaemia research.
"It's very underfunded already, so to have another budget cut towards it is very unfortunate. You already see it so, so much in Texas Children's Hospital and in the Texas Medical Center with a lot of people getting laid off and just not being able to be as effective as we have been in the past few years.
"I still feel so amazing and blessed to be able to be a part of a team who is still through it all, through the budget cuts, through whatever adversities, are still trying to find a cure, trying to help as many patients as possible," Alozie concluded.
"That's all that we can really do. There's nothing that we can really focus on with the budget, because there's nothing we can do about that, but we can still work as a team and really try to eradicate this."