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. saki who was born and grew up in Kaduna made his mark when he joined the Flying Eagles and the U-23 side, but finally joined ended up with a call-up to the Haitian national team in 2014.
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. ” According to him the Haitian football federation president liked his game and that was how he got the call-up to represent Haiti.