Coach of Arsenal Arsene Wenger is not too happy with the decision of star player Alex Iwobi to play for Nigeria instead of England. The team he represented at youth level before switching to play for Nigeria at senior level.
“He should be playing for England,” Wenger said in January, and he did for a while.
Iwobi made seven appearances for England’s under-16s, three for the under-17s and one at under-18 level and, by all accounts, was happily embedded in the setup. But then the invitations stopped.
“He played for the England youth teams for a while but when it came to the under-19s, they didn’t pick him,” Wenger added
Wenger blocked Iwobi from representing Nigeria at the Rio 2016 Olympics and the manager is one who is heavily opposed to the January timing of the Africa Cup Of Nations, which requires star players to leave during the business end of the season.
However Nigeria failed to qualify to next year Africa Cup of Nations, which means the 20 year old won’t be leaving the team in January.
Iwobi said himself in January that he would have “loved” to play for England and it would be intriguing to know why the FA did not try harder to make it happen before this year cutoff point when he played for Nigeria against Egypt.
