Watford's Isaac Success poised to lead Eagles attack against South Africa after Ighalo picks up injury

WATFORD striker Isaac Success is poised to lead the Super Eagles' attack against South Africa next weekend when the two sides square up to each other in Johannesburg next weekend in an African Nations Cup qualifier following an injury to Odion Ighalo.

 

Nigeria's first choice targetman Ighalo has been in fine form recently, scoring four goals in the Eagles last two matches. However, Ighalo,30, picked up an injury yesterday while playing for his club Changchun Yatai in a Chinese Super League game against Tianjin Quanjin, forcing him to be stretchered off with 17 minutes to go.

 

Super Eagles head coach Gernot Rohr has thus immediately called Henry Onyekuru into the squad as a replacement for Ighalo, with Success expected to take his starting place.  However, Success will still have to beat off competition from the likes of Kelechi Iheanacho and Victor Osimhen who is back in the team after a fine run in front of goal for his Belgium side Charleroi, where he is on loan from Wolfsburg of Germany.

 

Meanwhile, Coach Rohr and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president Amaju Pinnick are at loggerheads over two issues ahead of the next round of international games. After playing South Africa, Nigeria will take on Uganda and Mr Rohr is not happy about the selection of Asaba for the game but Mr Pinnick insists that it is not the job of the coach to pick match venues for the Super Eagles.

 

Mr Pinnick said: “Rohr has not told me anything on the Asaba venue yet. Based on the situation on ground, when a state government decides to sponsor about 70% of a game, it will go a long way to settle some issues.

 

With my experience as a football administrator, with due respect to the coach, the Asaba pitch is okay for the Super Eagles to play. I will call Rohr to clarify the statement.”

 

Furthermore he also said the coach should pick some home-based players, pointing out that in the game against Seychelles, Nigeria used fully-fledged professionals to prosecute a match which he believes local players could have handled. Mr Pinnick called on the coach to monitor the Nigeria Professional Football League and monitor players who are good enough to play for the Super Eagles to curb the dependency on foreign-based players all the time.

 

“Gernot Rohr’s continuous focus on foreign-based players for national team’s assignments is not right. If he uses foreign-based players against a team like Seychelles, I wonder what would happen when we play against big teams like Cameroon and the others," Mr Pinnick added.

 

Meanwhile, the proposed switch of allegiance of two of England youth internationals ‎to Nigeria is another matter Mr is expected to sort out over the coming week. Seyi Ojo and Ademola Lookman are firmly in the NFF but Mr Rohr is yet to make a formal approach to either player.

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