Eguavoen reveals key Super Eagles player suffered a knock vs Ghana, misses recovery training

Nigeria's caretaker manager Augustine Eguavoen has revealed that one of the players in his ideal starting lineup in Samuel Chukwueze suffered a knock during the 2022 World Cup playoff against Ghana on Friday night.

The Villarreal winger, who has started four of the five matches with Eguavoen in the dugout, made way for Watford star Emmanuel Dennis fourteen minutes into the second half and it has come to light that it was an injury-enforced substitution.

Allnigeriasoccer.com monitored Saturday evening's recovery workout in Abuja and can confirm that Chukwueze was with the Super Eagles team at the National Stadium but was among the players excused from the training session.

Eguavoen is hoping that the 'minor injury' suffered by Chukwueze will not prevent him from being ready for the upcoming game against Ghana.

The 1994 Africa Cup of Nations winner praised his team for holding their own against Ghana despite the intimidating atmosphere created by the fans.

Speaking to the Super Eagles media officer, Babafemi Raji at the end of the recovery session, Eguavoen said : "The players are in high spirits, we are more than half way through and the boys know it.

"I had a word with them a while ago, and I doff my hat to them because they were resilient. They worked hard in such an atmosphere, so I think it was a very good result.

"Some players didn't get involved now because one or two had a knock yesterday and recovery training people that played 90, 94 minutes usually will do just a little bit and then rest.

"People who didn't play up to 70 minutes would do more and that's exactly what we just did.

"Few of them that had knocks like Chukwueze, we just want to rest him, a complete rest, and then he can probably resume tomorrow".

Chukwueze missed the first two months of this campaign due to a long-term injury he was recovering from and didn't feature in all the six matches played by the Super Eagles in the second round of the 2022 World Cup qualifiers.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel