Leicester manager makes Fatawu plea following the winger’s omission from Ghana’s final squad for Africa Cup of Nations.
Enzo Maresca has urged Abdul Fatawu Issahaku to use his omission from Ghana’s Africa Cup of Nations squad as a chance to convince Leicester City they should buy him permanently in the summer, according to leicestermercury.co.uk.
The City manager has welcomed news that the winger will be with the club over the next six weeks rather than representing his nation at the tournament in the Ivory Coast. Fatawu was included in Ghana’s preliminary squad but left out of the final line-up, announced by their manager, Chris Hughton, on Monday.
With Fatawu in good form, it’s a boost for City, and should be seen as an opportunity for the teenager, Maresca has said. The 19-year-old is on loan from Sporting Lisbon, and having one more month to impress at the King Power Stadium may help convince the club to pay the cash to bring him in permanently in the summer.
“If you asked me if it was better for Abdul to play for his international team or here, I would tell you it’s much better for us to see him for January,” Maresca said. “Also, Abdul is in a position where he is a loan player so we have options in the future.
“When you lose a player for one month, probably we struggle a little bit more to take our decision at the end. Now he has time to continue to show us how good he is. Then at the end, we’re going to decide.”
Maresca’s suggestion that City can still make a decision over Fatawu does not tally with reports from Portugal. There, they say there is a compulsory purchase agreement of €17m (£14.7m) written into the loan deal that will be activated in the event of City earning promotion.
There have also been suggestions in Ghana that Fatawu himself turned down a call-up so that he could focus on City and make sure he hits the threshold of minutes required to meet a purchase clause in his loan contract. Had Fatawu been included in the Ghana squad, he would likely have only been a bench option for Hughton.
Maresca said he did not know if the reports from Ghana were true, but added: “We are happy if he did that. They text me on Sunday at 11pm and said Abdul is not going with his international team. The reason why I guess is because the manager didn’t call him. But I don’t know if they spoke between each other and they decided no.”
