Nigeria’s goal poacher, Odion Ighalo, has opened up on why he dumped his former Saudi club, Al Shabab and pitched tent with it’s rivals, Al Hilal.
Ighalo, who spoke with ESPN, attributed it to bad blood that arose from his failure to play in the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon.
Al Shabab had blocked the striker from participating in the tournament when it refused to issue him an exit visa to travel to Cameroon.
He said: “I was not happy with them and we decided to part ways because the Nations Cup that I didn’t go to caused a lot of bad blood.”
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He disclosed that Al Shabab, his former club, was supposed to issue him an exit visa that would allow him to travel to Cameroon, but failed to do so.
“Four hours until my flight [to Cameroon], they had not sent me the exit visa. I called the team manager, and he told me they did not get an invitation. But I had a copy of the invitation that was sent because they copied me in the email,” he recalled.
“We had all this back and forth going on, I changed the ticket to the next day, and then the third day, and they still did not send me the visa. At that point I knew they did not want me to go.
“My anger was that they should have told me straight up, not smiling in my face one day and then acting a different way. That is why I decided to leave.”
