In an interview with Nigerian television station Plus TV Africa monitored by allnigeriasoccer.com, one of the subjects Nigeria Football Federation President Amaju Pinnick touched on was the decision of several foreign-born players of Nigerian descent hesitating to play for the Super Eagles, with special reference to Chelsea stars Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori.

Pinnick had attempted to convince Abraham and Tomori to pledge their international futures to Nigeria before they became cap-tied to the Three Lions after featuring in competitive games against Czech Republic and Kosovo respectively in 2019.

The Nigerian Federation boss thought his closeness to Tammy's dad would influence the striker's decision to choose Nigeria over his country of birth, England which wasn't the case.

"I don't believe that's an issue, you have a choice, it's not just today, at a point John Fashanu refused to play for Nigeria, I was still in secondary school if not primary school," said Pinnick.

"We are all human beings, we are subjected to the various choices that we make, so to me it's their choice.

"I'm very close to Tammy Abraham's father, we grew up together, I've known him for over 40 years.

"I know the history of Tammy but if at the end of the day he decides to play for England we just wish him only good luck, Tomori too we wish him good luck."

Pinnick championed the recruitment of another Chelsea Academy product in Ola Aina, Lokomotiv Moscow's Bryan Idowu, Benfica's Tyronne Ebuehi and most recently Belgian-born striker Cyriel Dessers.

Having missed out on the services of Abraham, the football administrator has claimed that the Blues number nine is an inferior player to Victor Osimhen who had an excellent season with Lille.

Pinnick continued : "When we have people like Dessers that was even selected among the Eredivisie Team of the Season, I think we are happy and we are home. Prolific goalscorer.

"We have Osimhen that is doing very well, I cannot tell you that Tammy Abraham is better than Osimhen, it's not possible.

"Let us watch and see the future of these players, we are happy and very contented with what we have right now, the only thing we need to do is consolidate and build a very strong Super Eagles that can contest for the qualifying rounds and World Cup proper, we have a very young team."

Tottenham Hotspur's Dele Alli and Chelsea midfielder Ross Barkley are the other players in the England squad that were eligible to represent Nigeria before playing cap-tying games.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel

Photo Credit : chelseafc.com