{"id":2757,"date":"2019-01-18T17:05:39","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T17:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.com\/nigeria\/?p=2757"},"modified":"2019-01-18T17:05:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T17:05:39","slug":"he-is-a-talented-player-southampton-defender-olufunwa-hails-watfords-nigerian-eden-hazard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/he-is-a-talented-player-southampton-defender-olufunwa-hails-watfords-nigerian-eden-hazard","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;He Is A Talented Player&#8217; &#8211; Southampton Defender Olufunwa Hails Watford&#8217;s Nigerian Eden Hazard"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Southampton, who have one of the best academies in England, would be disappointed that they went out of the FA Youth Cup after they were beaten 2-1 by Watford in a fourth round tie at Wingate and Finchley on Thursday evening.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>As exclusively reported by this website, Nigeria Football Federation target Jayden Bennetts, whose playing style has drawn comparisons with Chelsea superstar Eden Hazard was named in the starting line-up, less than three days after he returned to the United Kingdom after training with the Flying Eagles.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The Saints Under-18s boss Paul Hardyman named promising fullback Oludare Olufunwa in the starting line-up.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Speaking after the game, a disappointed Olufunwa told\u00a0<b>allnigeriasoccer.com<\/b>\u00a0: &#8221;I played against Bennetts, he is a gifted player technically and can also tackle well.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8221;I think we had a good contest against each other yesterday and both tested each other defensively and offensively.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8221;We are a very good team but struggled to match Watford&#8217;s work rate. &#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Watford U18s manager also reserved special praise for Bennetts and told the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.watfordfc.com\/teams\/under-18s\/fa-youth-cup-report-reaction-watford-2-1-southampton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">club&#8217;s official website<\/a>\u00a0: &#8221;I thought Jayden Bennetts was magnificent.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8221;I thought Emmanuel, who came in for the star of the last round, was very effective, but all night the front two were excellent.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Bennetts came close to opening the scoring in the first half but his long-range strike hit the top of the bar.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Southampton, who have one of the best academies in England, would be disappointed that they went out of the FA Youth Cup after they were beaten 2-1 by Watford in a fourth round tie at Wingate and Finchley on Thursday evening. As exclusively reported by this website, Nigeria Football Federation target Jayden Bennetts, whose playing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":2761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[116,122],"class_list":["post-2757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-sport","tag-football","tag-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&#039;He Is A Talented Player&#039; - Southampton Defender Olufunwa Hails Watford&#039;s Nigerian Eden Hazard - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/he-is-a-talented-player-southampton-defender-olufunwa-hails-watfords-nigerian-eden-hazard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&#039;He Is A Talented Player&#039; - Southampton Defender Olufunwa Hails Watford&#039;s Nigerian Eden Hazard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Southampton, who have one of the best academies in England, would be disappointed that they went out of the FA Youth Cup after they were beaten 2-1 by Watford in a fourth round tie at Wingate and Finchley on Thursday evening. 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