Arsenal of England youngster, Bukayo Saka could be set to receive a hasty invitation to England’s senior national team, The Three Lions, if the hint served by his coach, Mikel Arteta is anything to go by, megasportsarena.com reports.
With Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) said to have sent an unofficial letter of invitation to the 18-year-old Saka, who has been capped by England at under-16, -17 and -18 levels, before his debut for the U19 squad in November 2018, Arteta believes the battle is set to his a crescendo.
Such it would be that England will now move to accord the Arsenal academy graduate a full senior invitation in the coming days, even as the NFF expect him to link up with other players from the English Premier League in the Super Eagles’ camp on March 20.
The NFF are using the bait of two other former England youth internationals, Ola Aina of AS Torino in Italy and Everton of England playmaker, Alex Iwobi, who left Arsenal only last summer to join The Toffees at Goodison Park.
However, Arteta said ahead of his side’s Emirates FA Cup clash with Portsmouth that Saka could earn his maiden England senior call-up this week, as they move fast to dissuade the winger-turned-left-back from pledging his international future to the three-time African champions.
The Three Lions are well stocked in the left-back and wing-back positions, with Ben Chilwell, Danny Rose and Luke Shaw competing for spots ahead of the 2020 European Championship, but England are using the bait of Chelsea’s Nigerian-born duo, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham to convince Saka that he has a strong future with their team.
Although technical facts indicate that Saka will find it difficult breaking into England’s team with only 31 games under his belt as a professional player, but Arteta believes his ward will get a call-up to fill in as an outright left-winger for upcoming friendlies against Italy and Denmark.
Arteta said: “He deserves a lot of credit for the way he is playing, because he is playing with a lot of courage as well. You could see the other night that in difficult moments he wanted to make an impact and he wanted to make risky decisions to try to generate goals. And that’s been him.
“He’s been very consistent with his performance, which at that age normally is not a common thing, but yes, I’m really pleased with him.”
