Ighalo: Such A Wrong Call

By Nnamdi Elekwachi

For sometime now I quit talking about the Super Eagles and their games. It wasn’t because I no longer love the game of soccer, especially when it has to do with our lads, it was that, for the Eagles, I’ve shed so much tears, celebrated and even dreamed anights countless times. But since I saw our soccer die following the 2002 disbandment of the Super Eagles under the late sports minister, Ishaya Mark Aku chiefly sustained by local coaches like Onigbinde, Chukwu and others, I placed a boycott on games involving the Eagles in 2018.

Recently, that boycott I placed on the Eagles’ games saw a reverse. It was so because all over Europe, including England, one gets to see Nigerian soccer athletes – both the capped and uncapped – banging in goals across Europe and doing well at their club sides, respectively. The talents at our possession if well hernessed can take Nigeria really far; it doesn’t need naming!

But the fact that coach Rohr and Pinnick could recall Ighalo and drop Taiwo Awoniyi is a no-no for me, in fact, a poor soccer policy I’m yet to process. How do you recall a retired and leave out a goal machine who is in the Bundesliga top scorers’ sheet, one who keeps banging in goals every other week handily?

With the panoply of lethal strikers in our ranks, likes of which include: Iheanacho, Simeone Nwankwo, Victor Osimehn, Paul Onuachu, Samuel Chukwueze and others with their consistent excellent run of form, who needs an Ighalo? Sometimes we spill fresh content for sour one; madness!

Ighalo can be a better player any day, with skills and eye for goal, but any coach, or say, any handler worth the naming will never drop young Awoniyi for a spent Ighalo. To me, Ighalo should have been left to continue with his retirement in peace. It was a wrong call, I dare say!