Okocha was wrong — Former Man City star reveals how AFCON made him reject Super Eagles

Former Manchester City star Nedum Onuoha has admitted he regrets turning down the opportunity to play for the Super Eagles, as it ultimately meant he failed to have an international career. 

The retired defender played for England at age-grade level. However, he was eligible to play for Nigeria; his parents hailed from the West African country and he was born in Warri, Delta State. 

Six years after hanging up his boots after a relatively successful stint in Major League Soccer (MLS) outfit, Salt Lake City, the 39-year-old reminisced on his career, regretting some of the decisions he made. 

 "So through my career, there's lots of things which I look back on and I wish I would have done something differently, even though in the moment it made perfect sense to me,” he told Jolien Lescott and another co-host on the Mixer podcast. 

Nedum was intently courted by the Super Eagles early in his career; however, according to him, he opted to focus on gaining ground at Manchester City under new head coach Roberto Mancini. 

"At the time, there was gonna be an AFCON coming up, and the manager was getting in contact with me, and he was saying he wanted me to come down to it.”

“For me personally, I see myself as two different people because I am Mancunian, I'll say that, but I'm very much Nigerian; Nigeria's 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.’

"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 and I'm gonna have nothing. I was like, 'I can't, I don't think I can do that.' 

“People were saying, 'Oh, you do it, you put yourself in a shop window,' this, that and the other. It's like, 'Nah.' And it was different back then as well. It's not like you see now, where players can go away to an AFCON or something like that, and it's a platform now. It wasn't really. They were saying it was, but again as a young person..."

Okocha famously warned Onuoha in 2010 that he would regret his decision to snub Nigeria while waiting for an England call-up. However, he insisted that he has other motivations.

"But what made it worse was…someone like Jay-Jay Okocha with the 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 beg to play for England than choose to play for their homeland in Nigeria. 

“Once you're painted with that brush, you're done...As I retired, I regret not playing international football, and if I'd have had a chance to do it for Nigeria, I know how much it would have meant for people like me."

Despite his efforts to succeed at Manchester City, the versatile defender struggled to gain prominence under Mancini, and he eventually left the club, first on loan to Sunderland before ultimately joining Queens Park Rangers permanently.