A former Nigerian teammate, Victor Ikpeba has laid to rest the speculation that some members of the USA 94 World Cup squad ganged up against Rashidi Yekini.
Yekini passed away last Friday in his hometown, Ira in Iyun local government, Kwara State and was buried on Saturday.
But Ikpeba, speaking on SuperSport’s football magazine show, Monday Night Football, cleared the air that he never perceived any form of hatred from some team members of the Super Eagles’ set of 1994 towards Yekini.
The former AS Monaco striker went on to explain that the competition for places in the Super Eagles may have been misconstrued by outsiders to mean on-field envy for the late Nigerian striker.
“I played with Yekini for seven years in the national team. I also played alongside him at the 1992 AFCON and I was one of the youngest in the team then. He was a fantastic and honest person and a professional who took every game serious. In training sessions, he was always serious as if they were match situations.
“I was part of the team in 1994 to the World Cup and I don’t agree that there was a gang up against Yekini. He played in 58 matches and scored 37 goals and his teammates created the chances for those goals. He was a conservative person and may be people may have used that to speculate this gang up thing,” Ikpeba said.
Ikpeba, now a TV pundit with SuperSport, extolled his late Super Eagles’ teammate as the best Nigerian striker he has played alongside with.
“There’s no doubt Rashidi Yekini was the best striker we had. He gave everything when goes on the pitch and that’s why he’s still the all-time leading scorer of Nigeria till date,” he said.
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