Nigeria’s Ighalo says he turned down ‘offer’ to be Barcelona striker

Nigeria Super Eagles striker Jude Ighalo has disclosed how he turned down an offer to join European giant Barcelona.

Apparently, the former Watford player was not willing to play second fiddle to any striker in the world, not even the highly rated Luis Suarez.

“My agent spoke to me about a loan interest from Barcelona,” Ighalo told Goal.

He explained that the purported deal “- was meant to be a six-month loan and strictly as a back-up striker” to Luis Suarez.

Although Ighalo felt flattered by the offer from the five-time European and serial champions of the Spanish league, but “deserves” a better deal from Barcelona having led the attack for Udinese, Granada and Watford.

He joined English premier league club Watford in 2014 from Italian side Udinese and left in January 2017, scoring 33 goals in 82 appearances.

Ighalo joined Chinese Super League side Changchun Yatai in 2017, where he scored 36 goals in 55 appearances but could not help the team survive relegation.

However, the Nigeria Super Eagles talisman, who signed for his current team Shanghai Shenhua in January 2019, believes he has a proven goalscoring record unbefitting of him to be Barcelona’s second striker.

“It was nice to hear that Barcelona were interested and any footballer would be more than happy to take it,” he said.

“But I had just finished as the second top scorer in China with 21 goals, I deserve better and didn’t want to be a short-term player somewhere.”