{"id":56554,"date":"2022-01-01T12:36:06","date_gmt":"2022-01-01T11:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/?p=56554"},"modified":"2022-01-01T11:28:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-01T10:28:29","slug":"afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis","title":{"rendered":"AFCON 2021: Real reason I was dropped from Nigeria\u2019s squad \u2013 Watford star, Dennis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>Super Eagles interim coach, Austin Eguavoen has revealed that Watford striker, Emmanuel Dennis told him that his club threatened him to miss the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON.<\/p>\n<p>Egyavoen claimed that Dennis told him he wanted to be part of Nigeria\u2019s squad for the AFCON this year, but Watford did everything humanly possible for him not to be at the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis was among the four players who were replaced in the Super Eagles\u2019 squad for the AFCON in Cameroon this January.<\/p>\n<p>The 24-year-old was replaced in the Super Eagles\u2019 28-man squad on Friday by Olympiacos\u2019 Henry Onyekuru after his Premier League club declined his release to play at the AFCON.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDennis told me that his club had done everything humanly possible for him not to be at the AFCON,\u201d Eguavoen told NFF TV.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t force it, I reported the matter to authority and they also tried, that was why we had to wait until the last second before we pushed the button.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDennis said he wanted to come, but the club are threatening him. What do we do if a player does not want to come, we have to play with what we have. Based on that, I like the enthusiasm because I only informed Onyekuru once and he was happy about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInitially, he has been an integral part of this team and I felt bad that some of them wouldn\u2019t be around but decisions have to be made. Onuachu, Onyekuru, Ebuehi, and few other ones and as soon as that opening was there, Shehu Abdullahi also said that the report came out that he\u2019s been injured and he\u2019s going to be out for ten days to two weeks and we reached out to Tyronne and he was happy too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\">Nigeria<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Super Eagles interim coach, Austin Eguavoen has revealed that Watford striker, Emmanuel Dennis told him that his club threatened him to miss the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON. Egyavoen claimed that Dennis told him he wanted to be part of Nigeria\u2019s squad for the AFCON this year, but Watford did everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":56553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,18,26],"tags":[5907,1570,2140,4940,254,3954],"class_list":["post-56554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-sport","category-twitter","tag-afcon-2021","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-nigeria-2","tag-dennis","tag-nigeria","tag-watford"],"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>AFCON 2021: Real reason I was dropped from Nigeria\u2019s squad \u2013 Watford star, Dennis - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Super Eagles interim coach, Austin Eguavoen has revealed that Watford striker, Emmanuel Dennis told him that his club th ...\" \/>\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\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AFCON 2021: Real reason I was dropped from Nigeria\u2019s squad \u2013 Watford star, Dennis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Super Eagles interim coach, Austin Eguavoen has revealed that Watford striker, Emmanuel Dennis told him that his club th ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nigeria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-01-01T11:36:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2022\/01\/img-61d02ca6e6320.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"AFCON 2021: Real reason I was dropped from Nigeria\u2019s squad \u2013 Watford star, Dennis\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-01-01T11:36:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\"},\"wordCount\":323,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2022\/01\/img-61d02ca6e6320.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"AFCON 2021\",\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Nigeria\",\"Dennis\",\"Nigeria\",\"Watford\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"homepage-english\",\"Sport\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sport\/afcon-2021-real-reason-i-was-dropped-from-nigerias-squad-watford-star-dennis\",\"name\":\"AFCON 2021: Real reason I was dropped from Nigeria\u2019s squad \u2013 Watford star, Dennis - 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