Al Shabab of Saudi Arabia forward Odion Ighalo won’t be allowed to play for Nigeria at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, OwnGoalNigeria.com can exclusively reveal.
The Saudi Arabia outfit have refused to honour the request of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) inviting the forward for the tournament insisting that they got his invitation letter late.
However Ighalo is pushing the club to allow him team up with the Super Eagles before the team departs for Cameroon but as at the time of filing in this report, there is no breakthrough yet in their discussion.
In a bid not to be caught unaware, we gathered the technical crew led by interim coach Austine Eguavoen have already contacted a likely replacement as talks with Al Shabab appears not to be progressing as expected.
Ighalo is however confident that he will be at the tournament, but the technical crew are skeptical hence their decision to contact a replacement which we gather is one among the trio of Akinkumi Amoo, Isaac Success and Simy Nwankwo.
A deadline for Ighalo to be in the camp of the team have been set but it wasn’t made known to us as at the end of today’s training session at the Moshood Abiola stadium.
