Sports

Wenger Wanted Iwobi To Play For England

Published

8 years ago

September 27, 2016

Arsenal coach, Arsene Wenger is not happy that his star player Alex Iwobi, decided to play for Nigeria instead of England. Iwobi represented England 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 set-up.

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 when he played for Nigeria against Egypt.