While the Olympics Football team of Nigeria for 1996 was called Dream Team came as a result of the quality of players of that age group available to Nigeria at that time. It's not because they were dreaming of Olympic gold. After all, it wasn't Nigeria's first participation in Olympics Football (1968 Olympics, Nig 3 vs 3 Brazil), Nigeria played in "1980 & 1988 Olympics too.)
One of the best local coaches then, Willie Bazuaye was assigned to raise a quality U-23 team for Nigeria for the qualifiers. He started with mostly local players who almost stumbled after a goalless draw against Kenya in Lagos in 1995.
Meanwhile, from the World Champion Golden Eaglets of Japan 1993, the generation of Kanu Nwankwo, Wilson Oruma, Celestine Babayaro at al, there were quality young players some of whom had already secured contracts in Europe, even the Super Eagles of Tunisia 1994, that won the AFCON, had the likes of Okocha, Taribo West, Oliseh, Dan Amokachie etc. football fans were dreaming of seeing these array of quality young players playing at the Olympics and a high chance of probability of good showing since most of them have been champions already.
So, after that wobbly performance of the original U-23 team against Kenya, NFA was under pressure to bring in these players for the return leg in Mobassa. Everyone who was aware of our football from '85 till that '95 could call the names of the players who should be that team. So , NFA just had to do the needful. When the team appeared in Kenya, it was different from the team the Kenyans played against in Lagos (they were dreaming of beating Nigeria for the first time).
After 90mins, it was Nigeria 3:0 Kenya. In fact, the Kenyan players were requesting autographs from Okocha and Co.
In their final qualifying match in Lagos against Egypt, when we saw the line-up on TV, it was unanimous that that was the team we had dreamth of having. Their display against Egypt which end 3:2 in favour of Nigeria and 1:1 away in Egypt confirmed the players as the "Dream Team".
It was after their success in Atlanta "96 that every other U-23 team for Olympics kept the name as "Dream Team". So, Dream Team came to be due to the collection of quality players in the team not because they were dreaming. They were "our Dream Team. I was a 300L student in UNIBEN that year.