Former Golden Eaglets star, Emmanuel Sarki has come out to make a shocking revelation on how some coaches in Nigeria demanded £5,000 for him to get senior national team call up.
Sarki shone with the younger teams, including the Golden Eaglets, Flying Eagles, and U-23s.
The Kaduna-born winger appeared destined for the Super Eagles, but he was called up to the Haitian national team in 2014.
According to Sarki, when he was approached to play for Nigeria, he dropped the idea.
Sarki was a teammate of John Obi Mikel in the Golden Eaglets team that featured in the 2003 FIFA U-17 World Cup hosted by Finland. In an interview with the Athletic, he said that he was told to pay £5,000 in a bid to represent the Super Eagles. In his words he said: “There were people demanding I pay £5,000 just to make sure Nigeria called me up.”
“What? I have to pay to play football for my country. No way, I’m not doing that. But my grandfather had come from Haiti to Nigeria as a missionary, I had his birth certificate, and there was another Haitian in the team at Wisla, who called the Haitian Football Federation president and told him all about me,” Sarki told the Athletic,” he said.
Now Sarki has stopped playing football because of his air sickness.
He said: “It was too stressful for me. I said to them I was sorry, but I’m done. I don’t want to travel that far. I was throwing up on the flights; I felt dizzy.”
“To represent them was really amazing but now I’m getting old. I’m 33, taking it easy, just balling. I have a young son, Samuel, and my fiancée is Polish. I am home.”
