{"id":16491,"date":"2019-10-08T15:11:40","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T15:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.com\/nigeria\/?p=16491"},"modified":"2019-10-08T15:11:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T15:11:40","slug":"fikayo-tomori-why-i-chose-england-ahead-of-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/fikayo-tomori-why-i-chose-england-ahead-of-nigeria","title":{"rendered":"Fikayo Tomori: Why I Chose England Ahead Of Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 21-year-old has been a revelation in the heart of Chelsea\u2019s defence this season, and that has earned him a call-up to England\u2019s national team, but he has now revealed it was not a given he was going to represent the Three Lions ahead of Nigeria and Canada<\/p>\n<p>Tomori was also eligible to play for one of Canada or Nigeria, but he is set to feature for England after he was named in Gareth Southgate\u2019s squad for the Euro 2020 qualifiers against Czech Republic and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on why he decided to choose England ahead of Canada and Nigeria, Tomori said he would have represented either of those countries had they extended an invitation to him before England did.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with Goal where Soccernet.ng got excerpts from, Tomori revealed it was not 100% sure he was going to play for England despite representing them at youth level.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEngland is such a big nation, as well as Nigeria and Canada, so I think I was going to be happy with whoever called me up \u2013 but it\u2019s nice it is England,\u201d Tomori said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt wasn\u2019t England all the way. I had certain people and certain things that I had to consider. I spoke to my family and people that I care about it and that\u2019s the decision I came to. So, when England came calling, it was difficult to say no.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was just more of a thing I was waiting for a call-up because the last international break I didn\u2019t get a call-up from anyone. This international break, I was waiting for a call-up and England called me up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 21-year-old has been a revelation in the heart of Chelsea\u2019s defence this season, and that has earned him a call-up to England\u2019s national team, but he has now revealed it was not a given he was going to represent the Three Lions ahead of Nigeria and Canada Tomori was also eligible to play for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":16493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[174,111,115],"class_list":["post-16491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-football-in-nigeria","tag-nigerian-national-team","tag-nigerian-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - 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