Former Super Eagles player, Etim ‘Maradona’ Esin has opened up on the many controversies that dogged his once promising career – from going into drugs after he did not make the 1994 World Cup to the rape case that forced him to flee Belgium.
The former Nigeria international said on a radio station interview yesterday that he did everything to make the 1994 World Cup.
“I got many people, MKO Abiola, (Augustus) Aikhomu to get Westerhof to pick me, but he said no because he didn’t pick the squad,” Esin said.
“Keshi, may his soul rest in peace, picked the team and he had beef with me, so I was out.
“If I had made the squad, I would have been captain.”
He also revealed his failure to feature at Nigeria’s World Cup debut in 1994 forced him into drugs.
He blamed youth exuberance and naivety for the rape case which bagged him a suspended sentence in Belgium.
“The girl looked like 18, but she was 16. I accepted I had an affair with her,” he said. I was too young and naïve.”
However, he was also philosophical about what he has had to battle.
“I’m lucky to be alive, God had a purpose to slow me down, (that may be why) I didn’t fulfill my potentials.”
He plans to put out an autobiography of his rather colourful, short-lived career before the World Cup in Russia.
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