Former Manchester City defender Nedum Onuoha has revealed the circumstances that led to his decision to turn down the chance of playing for the senior national team of Nigeria, OwnGoalNigeria.com reports.
Onuoha represented England at various youth levels, most notably at U21 but was eligible to play for Nigeria through his parents, who were immigrants from the West African country.
However in 2010, when he was approached by the then coach of the Nigerian team to be a part of the team for the AFCON, and subsequently the world cup he declined.
Speaking in a podcast AllOutFootball on YouTube, the 39 year old who is now retired and works majorly as a television pundit, explained the reason behind his decision back then which he said gave him a reason to regret at the end of his career, but felt right at that time.
Below is excerpts from the interview.
So throughout my career there is a lot of things like, which I look back on. And I wish you would have done something differently, even though in the moment it made perfect sense to me.
Coming through Man City Academy being a City supporter, nothing was more important to me than playing for City. Yeah, and this is the time when I think Mancini had just come in and played the last game under Mark Hughes, the previous manager. I was very much part of his process, then often Mancini came in.
Then Dedryck Boyata was in the reserves, then all of a sudden Dedryck was in the first team, playing ahead of me and it’s weird. I found it really, really weird, because we are like halfway through the season, and at the time there was going to be an AFCON coming up and the manager of Nigeria was getting in contact with me, and he was saying he wanted me to come down for it and for me personally, I see myself as two different people because I am Macunian and I’ll say that, but very much Nigeria.
Nigeria is home for me if I’m in a room full of people from Nigeria, I feel like, I know, every single one of them.
“That’s just how it is. For me, something about the culture is, like, that’s my family. That’s my bloodline. That’s what it is. Yeah, but from a football standpoint, I remember thinking, right? I’m currently not playing at City here, and I’m gonna go away for six weeks in January. I’m gonna come back. I’m gonna have nothing. I can’t. I don’t think I can do that. People saying, oh, you do it. You put yourself in a shop window./, but I said I need to focus on the side of things to stay in City.
Stayed at City and didn’t play anyway, but what made it worse was like, he is a family friend now relatively speaking. Yeah, but uh, someone like JJ Okocha with influence that he has, and to be fair, John Obi Mikel said a little bit as well. They put me in this bracket of people who would rather like beg to play for England than choose to play for the homeland Nigeria, and once you are paint with that brush. You are done.
And as I retired, like, I regret not playing international football, and if I’d have had a chance to do it for Nigeria, know how much you would have meant for people like me, yeah. But, you know, the decision was made in that time.
Mohammed Mowiz Suleiman
