Connections - Nigeria

England meet Nigeria for just the third time this week. Tottenham have  a few connections with the country, which date back to 1949 and also include a player touring that country and a legend managing their national side.

Spurs have had one first team player from that country in its history but he was honoured by the Countries President. While one of our English players set an England record against them.

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updated June 2018

John Okay Chiedozie (top) joined Spurs in 1984. John was born in his native country and moved to England when he was 12 years old. He scored on his Tottenham debut away to Everton. A speedy right winger he played seventy five games and netted fourteen times. He had a series of injuries at Tottenham and these would curtail his career. He left Spurs for Derby in 1988. John won three of his nine caps whilst at Spurs and scored twice for his country.
In 2002 he was made an ‘Officer of the Order of Niger' by the President for his contribution to football.

Tottenham’s first connection with the African country was in 1949 when the Nigerian national team toured England playing nine amateur sides. Most of their players played in bare feet.
During the tour they visited White Hart Lane to watch Spurs beat Sheffield Wednesday with the only goal scored by Len Duquemin in the season we ran away with the Second Division title.

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In December 2007 Steffen Freund was appointed Assistant Team Manager to their national side for the duration of the African Nations Cup the following month where they reached the quarter finals.

Then in 1958, with the England team preparing for the World Cup, an FA XI team was sent to play five games in the country and two more in Ghana. Our own Johnny Hills was included in the party.

The FA XI side went unbeaten including one game that was abandoned due to strong winds. Hills a full back only played 32 games for Tottenham being an understudy mostly to Ramsey and then Baker.

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England have met Nigeria twice before this week. The first was in 1994 when the sides played at Wembley and England won 1-0. The Spurs connection’s were Teddy Sheringham who came on in the 79th minute and Terry Venables as manager.   The second game was at the 2002 World Cup. This time the game in Japan ended 0-0 which as enough for England to progress to the last sixteen. Teddy Sheringham (left in the 2002 game) again came on as a substitute setting a record for sub appearances for England (17).  He is also the only man to play against them in both games.

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William Troost - Ekong (right) was a trainee with Spurs before moving to Belgium in 2013 without making a first team appearance. He has played for the Dutch Under 20 side before being part of the Nigerian Bronze medal team at the last Olympics. 

Since leaving Spurs he has also played in Norway and currently Turkey. He has recently been a member of the National team and is expected to go to this summers World Cup.

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COYS
Keith Harrison.
t- Keith 16024542
f - https://www.facebook.com/keith.harrison.9659
My profile / archive is @ http://www.indiaspurs.com/keith_harrison.html

Other 'Connections' are at -
http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-the-international-index