January 05, (THEWILL) –Â Augustine Eguavoen, Nigeria’s caretaker manager, has explained why red-hot Feyenoord forward Cyriel Dessers was left out of the Super Eagles’ TotalEnergies 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) squad.
After Emmanuel Dennis and Victor Osimhen withdrew from the 28-man finalised roster, Eguavoen gave late call-ups to Peter Olayinka of Slavia Prague and Henry Onyekuru of Olympiakos.
This obviously did not sit well with Dessers, who took to social media to vent his frustration before deleting his post.
THEWILL recalls that ex-Super Eagles’ coach Gernot Rohr also did not include the Belgian-born centre striker in the country’s 40-man provisional squad for the tournament in Cameroon, therefore the odds were stacked against his invitation in the final squad.
However, he made a case for being invited as since his loan move to the Eredivisie giants, the Racing Genk striker has found a new lease on life, scoring nine goals in 21 appearances, primarily from the bench for Feyenoord.
In his defence, Eguavoen explained: “Dessers, I spoke to the [NFF] President about it. I have watched Olayinka in Champions League game against Inter, I haven’t watched Dessers closely so because of the time factor that’s why I decided to stick to people that I know.
“Onyekuru, he came in because Dennis is out and Onyekuru has always been around with the team, Dennis has not always been around the team. Olayinka was named in the 40-man list and I didn’t want to go outside the 40-man list”.
Dessers has not been called up to the Super Eagles since making his debut against Tunisia in a friendly on October 13, 2020. It will benefit Feyenoord because they will be able to keep their super-sub for the duration of the tournament.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
