Nigeria Football Federation Hoping To Beat England To Arsenal Wonderkid Bukayo Saka

The Nigeria Football Federation are still lagging behind their English counterparts in the race for the services of Arsenal starlet Bukayo Saka.

Amaju Pinnick, President of the NFF, is known to be an admirer of the 18-year-old, with the football administrator likening him to a goldfish with no hiding place, adding that he does not need to lobby before he is invited to the Super Eagles.

Saka is provisionally cap-tied to his country of birth, England, having played competitively for the Young Lions at U17 and U19 levels, meaning he has to apply to FIFA for a change of association if he decides to switch allegiance to Nigeria.

The 2019-2020 campaign has been a banner season for the versatile winger, so much so that there was speculation that he was going to be included in England's European Championship squad.

The postponement of Euro 2020 by one year means the Nigerian Federation have more time on their hands to convince Saka to switch his allegiance to the three-time African champions.

A key member of Gernot Rohr's technical crew has admitted that the Arsenal number 77 is among the English-based dual-eligible players being scouted with a view to a call-up to the Super Eagles, but the coronavirus outbreak has slowed things down.

Asked if Saka has been approached to represent Nigeria, he told allnigeriasoccer.com : "There's always hope until it is over but at the moment we are not doing anything because the world is faced with a different challenge, but when the time comes we'll look into it.

"We look at everybody, there is no specific player that we look at, if they are eligible and their name flags up and they are one-eighth Nigerian we look at them automatically."

Saka became the second youngest Nigeria-eligible player to debut in the English top-flight in its current format when he replaced Alex Iwobi after 82 minutes in the Gunners' 4-1 rout of Fulham on January 1, 2019.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel

Photo Credit : arsenal.com