Fans of Greek champions PAOK have blamed their exit from the UEFA Champions League on the decision of the captain of the senior national team of Nigeria William Troost-Ekong to leave the team for Saudi Arabia as why they didn’t make it to the group stages of the tournament.
Ekong is putting finishing touches to a big money move to newly promoted Saudi Arabia side Al Khalood hence missed their recent qualifiers games in European elite tournament, where a 3-4 loss at home to Malmo saw them crash out of the tournament on a 5-6 aggregate score.
Ekong who scored in the first round games against Borac missed both games with his move to Saudi Arabia on the horizon. Fans of the team believed the poor timing of his decision played a huge role on their exit from the money spinning group stage of the tournament.
” We (PAOK) are not losing this with Ekong still with us”, a fan wrote on X formerly known as Twitter. His views on the importance of the 30 year old was corroborated by two others ” No way will PAOK concede like they this if Ekong was there in defence”, another fan wrote.
” Poor timing to let the AFCON MVP (Ekong) leave. Not like he has joined his new team why didn’t he play today? Apparently the club picked making money on his transfer above the team succeeding in Europe”, reads a post from a fan of the team.
