'He didn't align with my ambitions' - Ex-Liverpool striker reveals agent advised her not to play for Super Falcons  

Former Liverpool striker Rinsola Babajide has revealed that her former agent advised her not to play international football for Nigeria. 

Now a two-cap Nigeria international having made appearances off the bench in the back-to-back Paris 2024 Olympic qualifiers against Ethiopia in October, Babajide played for almost all the age grade teams of England and attended two Lionesses training camps before switching her allegiance to the Super Falcons. 

The Nigeria Football Federation had been monitoring the progress of Babajide for several years but she initially fancied her chances of representing her country of birth, England at senior level, having played for the Young Lionesses. 

One of the reasons she left Liverpool in the summer of 2021 following their relegation to the Championship was because she wanted to improve her chances of making her senior debut for the Lionesses. 

Babajide has now set the record straight, saying that she stuck with England because her agent reckoned that there was a pathway into the senior national team. 

Asked to reveal when she started nursing the ambition to play for Nigeria, the UDG Tenerife star said to Totori News' Francis Achi,: "I would say since 2019 but like I had an agent also and he didn't really align with my ambitions so he kind of kept me in that direction that I was staying on.

"There was not much I could take over my career at that moment in time but now that I have no agent I'm making my own decisions for myself, my family and my career also.

"I played for England U18, U19, U20 , U23 and then I had two training camps with the first team of England.

"It took a bit longer for me to change allegiances but the plan was for it to be done before the World Cup, for me to be eligible to be selected for the World Cup but it took a little longer."

Babajide was a member of the England squad that won bronze at the 2018 Fifa U20 Women's World Cup.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel 

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