Racing Genk of Belgium attacker, Cyriel Dessers has refuted speculation that he is about to snub the opportunity of playing for Nigeria in order to set himself up for a future international career with the country where he was born and he will ply his trade for the coming season, megasportsarena.com reports.
Dessers, who has a Belgian father and Nigerian mother, shot to prominence when he emerged joint-top scorer at Heracles Almelo of Holland in the past season, which won him a transfer to Genk early last month and then brought about talc of likely change in national team allegiance.
Speculation about him switching allegiance to Belgium gained prominence at the weekend when one of the European country’s former national team stars, Luc Nilis suggested that the national team’s coach, Roberto Martinez should give the mulatto hitman an invitation in September.
The Belgian ex-international maintained that Dessers is currently Belgium’s best centre-forward and believes there is no reason why the country ranked No.1 by international soccer governing body, FIFA in the monthly global ratings should not call him up in September, and he reckoned that the Dutch Eredivisie revelation deserves to be invited for The Red Devils’ next outing.
He went on to rate Dessers only second to Romelu Lukaku but ahead of Christian Benteke and Mitchy Batshuayi; hence his verdict that Martinez should move fast to scupper hopes held by Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to cap the fast-rising strider, who initially expressed a strong desire to play for his mother’s country, instead of Belgium, where his father hails from, where he was also born and had his first feel of football as a teenager before moving to Holland.
Nilis posited: “With all due respect to Benteke and Batshuayi, but you are more number nine than them. If you score, the national team coach cannot look beyond you, Cyriel.”
However, the 25-year-old Desssers, who has scored twice in two friendly games since joining Genk from Heracles, said he is ready to accept another invitation from Nigeria, after being handed a debut call-up in March for double fixtures in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Sierra Leone; but the games were cancelled due to the outbreak of coronavirus.
He poured cold water on reports suggesting that he would turn his back on Nigeria should he get a call from Martinez ahead of a possible return to international football next month, and the in-form attacker stressed that all the recent stories about a possible change in his national team allegiance are unfounded fabrications churned out by writers who want to attract online traffic.
Dessers submitted: “It’s just the click bait sites who take things out of context and make juicy titles. They made a story from nothing. I didn’t even talk with Belgium and then they make a story. I said I hoped for a call in September, but that’s not even sure. That’s the coach who decides. It’s not in my hands.”
