{"id":128502,"date":"2019-06-20T18:27:38","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T17:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=128502"},"modified":"2019-06-20T18:31:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T17:31:30","slug":"afcon-2019-what-obi-mikels-return-means-to-super-eagles-odion-ighalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=128502","title":{"rendered":"AFCON 2019: What Obi Mikel\u2019s return means to Super Eagles – Odion Ighalo"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nigeria striker, Odion Ighalo, has described captain, John Obi Mikel\u2019s return to the Super Eagles\u2019 squad as a big plus.<\/p>\n

The Shanghai Shenhua star stated that it was great to have the former Chelsea star return to Gernot Rohr\u2019s side, adding that the 32-year-old is a legend.<\/p>\n

Mikel Obi, who has not played competitively for Nigeria since last year\u2019s World Cup in Russia, is currently without a club after Middlesbrough released him.<\/p>\n

The midfielder will captain Nigeria at the 2019 African Cup of Nations, AFCON, in Egypt.<\/p>\n

\u201dHe is our captain, he is a good leader, it\u2019s great to have him back, the motivation he brings to the team,\u201d Ighalo told the Super Eagles media team.<\/p>\n

\u201dHe didn\u2019t play the qualifiers, we did well without him, him joining us is a big plus because teams in Africa will get scared a bit with Mikel in the Super Eagles squad.<\/p>\n

\u201dHe has done great for club and country, he is a legend. He can play, he is still fresh, he is still doing what he knows how to do best.<\/p>\n

\u201dHe\u2019s a good passer of the ball which every striker will be happy to have in his side. For me, I am really happy he is back and hopefully we can achieve what we want to achieve together by God\u2019s grace.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigeria striker, Odion Ighalo, has described captain, John Obi Mikel\u2019s return to the Super Eagles\u2019 squad as a big plus. The Shanghai Shenhua star stated that it was great to have the former Chelsea star return to Gernot Rohr\u2019s side, adding that the 32-year-old is a legend. Mikel Obi, who has not played competitively for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/128503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}