Aston Villa Starlet Udanoh Departs Nigeria U17 Training Camp

Published: September 03, 2019

Allnigeriasoccer.com has been informed that Aston Villa central defender Iffy Udanoh has departed the Golden Eaglets training camp in Abuja.

Born in Maryland, United States, Udanoh's priority was to represent Nigeria and had paid his way to attend the screening exercise in Abuja, but has been deemed surplus to requirements by coaches Manu Garba and Nduka Ugbade.

With the Nigeria U17s leaking goals aplenty during the regional qualifiers and U17 AFCON, the central defensive, goalkeeping and fullback positions are the problematic areas in the team heading into the tournament in Brazil.

The Golden Eaglets coaches have insisted that the local-based players are more hungry and deserve to make the final roster more than their foreign-based counterparts, and Nigeria should not be the option for the dual-eligible players until they are older.

The players from England spent close to 2,000 pounds each (approximately N890,000.00) on flight tickets to Abuja and were disappointed that they were invited to the training camp when the coaches had no intentions of selecting them in the squad.

The squad for the UEFA Assist Tournament in Turkey is close to being finalised and most of the boys that represented the country at the U17 AFCON in Tanzania will be included in the group.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel