Southgate says England chose to play Super Eagles because he admires Nigeria's flair and panache

ENGLAND manager Gareth Southgate has revealed that he opted to play against Nigeria in his next friendly because of his fondness for Nigerian footballers like Nwankwo Kanu and Jay-Jay Okocha and the flair with which they played.

On June 2, Nigeria will face England at Wembley in a pre-World Cup friendly, which is gearing up to be an exciting match. Mr Southgate has already sent his list of the 23 players he intends taking to the World Cup to Fifa, while Gernot Rohr, Nigeria's head coach has sent a provisional squad of 30 to the governing body.

Mr Southgate said: “We didn’t choose Nigeria for the June 2 friendly match  just because we had an African team in our group at the World Cup but the truth is that we don’t often have the opportunity of playing teams outside Europe and we thought it was a great opportunity playing against Nigeria. I was in the squad when we played Nigeria in 2002 and there have been a lot of Nigerian players that have been successful in the Premier League like Kanu and  Jay Jay Okocha, both of them really made a great impact in our league and they are my favourite Nigerian players.”

Next month's match will be the third international game between both countries at senior level since Nigeria and England first clashed in a post-USA’94 game at the old Wembley Stadium on November 16 . Former England captain David Platt scored the only goal of the game with a late first half header.

Both teams met again at the Nagai Stadium in Osaka, Japan on June 12 2002 in a goalless encounter that saw the Super Eagles being eliminated at the group stage of the Korea/ Japan 2002 World Cup. England are yet to lose to an African team in a senior international friendly and Mr Rohr is hoping to become the first manager to achieve this feat.

Mr Southgate is one of the few relatively young managers heading  to Russia 2018 World Cup  but he  reckons the wisdom of coaching  at the international level has nothing to do with age, insisting all that is required  for such a high profile job as England manager is resilience. A holder of the UEFA Pro Licence, Mr Southgate has been in coaching since 2006 from Middlesbrough to the England U-21, to the Three Lions.