|
|
Nigeria: Eagles Target Agbonlahor for Austria
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
This Day (Lagos)
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 16 May 2008
Olawale Ajimotokan
Lagos
Super Eagles technical crew has embarked on another chase of Aston Villa's Gabriel Agbonlahor for the friendly match against Austria later in the month after the winger turned down the initial overtures to him in the past.
Birmingham born Agbonlahor is of Nigerian and Scottish parentage. But his intention is to represent England at the full international level and is a step to fulfilling that dream having already been capped at the U-21 level.
The pacy forward was a target of former Eagles coach Austin Eguavoen to be a part of the Eagles plan for German 2006 and Egypt 2006 respectively. But he pledged his future to England when he was capped at the youth level against Germany as a sub in October 2006.
England manager Fabio Capello named him as a member of the England squad to play Switzerland in February although was forced to pull out of the side by injury.
Current Eagles assistant coach, Daniel Amokachi, THISDAYSports understands has been mandated to sway Agbonlahor to be a part of the Eagles rebuilding process towards Angola and South Africa 2010 respectively.
Amokachi himself confirmed the latest development yesterday saying he would try to reach the 22-year old player to consider the fresh Nigerian approach.
"We are making a new approach for him (Agbonlahor) to be the new addition to the Eagles list which coach Shaibu Amodu released for the Austrian friendly in Graz. He will also be part of the team for the World Cup and Nations Cup qualifiers in the summer. We could not secure him in the past because the approach we used was not right. We are talking with his contacts now and if we can convince him to join us, it will be a big plus for Nigeria because of the options he will give us upfront." Amokachi said.
The Bull also said that Nigeria would not be dissuaded from their approach by Agbonlahor's status as an England U-21 player insisting that England's non qualification for the Euro 2008 that holds this summer in Austria- Switzerland will brighten Nigeria's prospect to do a deal.
In a related development, injury scare has made Watford defender Danny Shittu a big doubt for Nigeria's friendly match against Austria on May 27.
|
The hard tackling Shittu who was the best Eagles performer at Ghana 2008 has put the national coaches on red alert as he is due to undergo a medical today to assess the extent of the injury.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
