It became apparent during the European Championship that Switzerland head coach Murat Yakin did not see Noah Okafor as being a big part of his plans, and their relationship has taken a further turn.
Okafor’s national team coach spoke in the week before the tournament in Germany about the forward’s chances of playing and he seemed to criticise Milan’s use of him.
“Every move also involves great risks, he is rarely a starter with his club. Especially for a striker, it is important to play and his limited playing time is certainly not optimal,” he said.
According to Blick in Switzerland (via Radio Rossonera), Okafor will most likely not be called up by coach Yakin for the Nations League fixtures that will see Switzerland play against Denmark and Spain during the upcoming international break.
The coach had ‘already warned Okafor in March’ about his lack of playing time, which couple with his ‘attitude’ led Yakin to grant him zero minutes in the European Championship that took place in Germany.
Blick says that Okafor’s ‘dissatisfaction’ was evident in their pre-tournament training camp, both in the ‘lack of intensity in training’ and in his ‘negative body language’.
Despite a good start to the season with the Rossoneri – including a beautiful 95th-minute goal as a substitute at San Siro against Torino which gave Milan a draw – Okafor is therefore heading towards not being called up.
Good. The fewer players are on national team duty the better.
Wouldn’t mind Deschamps snubbing Theo.
It is really sad to see how overall quality of football drops because of FIFA and UEFA. We don’t need more matches, there’s already plenty to follow. We need to see quality players at their top game. If not that, they have to increase the quota for team sizes and even more subs in the games. This will at least give more players the chance to play in the best clubs and will also decrease the overall valuation and salaries…
The Serie A should have 16-18 teams. The bottom ones are too weak to justify playing in the top flight. They bring no good to the competition.
You’re probably from a country with a poor national team to think like this. It’s the only part of the game that is not disrupted by greedy agents and owners, or contract negotiations, or speculation, ROI, IP. In France or Italy we take immense pride watching our national teams play at the World Cup or the Euro.
Well, Italy ain’t that good right now. Hate to say.
And for comparison Bundesliga only has 18 teams and also a pretty good national team.
Yeah but Italy has won 4 World Cups and 2 Euros, the last one being in 2021. They’re in difficulty right now but it’s still a major football nation and they should rise again. It happens to Brazil, Germany, it happened to France, Spain, etc.
I was not commenting regarding the number of teams in the league, anyway we’re heading toward super leagues in the near future.
It is well 👍