Super Eagles assistant captain William Troost Ekong has revealed how he decided to play for Nigeria over Netherlands.
Born in Harlem to Nigerian father, Ekong is qualified to play for the West African nation as well as the Netherlands.
But a phone from the late coach Stephen Keshi convinced him to play for the Super Eagles.
“I made the decision quite early in my career. I was 20 at the time, I just finished my breakthrough season in the Netherlands, first year of playing probably 30 plus games in the Eredivisie, which is the highest league in the Netherland,” Ekong told Sports after party podcast.
“And all of a sudden I got a phone call from Stephen Keshi, who was the coach at the time, ex-captain and ex-player, so I was quite blown away when he called me.
“Just at the start of the season, I had played for the Dutch U19 and U20 squads, but there was no real perspective yet for the first team.
“This was the only tangible option that I had. The choice was between trying to progress and later in my career maybe have a chance to play for the Netherlands or have a chance now to play for the Super Eagles who were kind of going through a transition stage where a lot of their defenders that time were a little bit older, so I knew that they wanted to make some changes there.
“And taking that opportunity which then in turn would give me more perspective for my club so I kind of made that decision thinking about all those things.”
