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Rangers star reacts to Brazil friendly & Okocha comparisons

by comsmedia

Rangers midfielder Joe Aribo has reacted to next month international friendly match against Brazil and Jay-Jay Okocha comparisons just four years after he was lining up for Staines in the English non-league side.

The 23-year-old London-born has enjoyed a meteoric rise after a successful spell at Charlton and his summer Ibrox switch has now earned him international recognition with Super Eagles.Aribo made a scoring debut for Nigeria in the 2-2 friendly draw with Ukraine in Dnipro last month but Gernot Rohr had planned to drop the newly invited players for October international friendlyagainst South American giants.The German tactician has revealed that impressed with Rangers attacking midfielder displays mean he will now get a call-up to face Brazil in Singapore on October 13, where former Bordeaux boss said he told Daily Record.”My plan was to play a very experimental line-up against Ukraine and use several new players but then go back to playing my strongest team against Brazil.”I wasn’t going to include some of those new players that played against Ukraine but I had to change my mind because of their performances. One of the new players, Joe Aribo, impressed me so much that I now regard him as an important member of the team and so he will play against Brazil.”And, preparing for tonight’s Betfred Cup quarter-final clash at Livingston, he said: “Games don’t come much bigger than Brazil and we know they’ve got a lot of stars like Neymar.”That’s the type of opponents I want to be playing against and it would be good to swap a jersey with one of those superstars.

“I’ll see so many stars and I’ll take a moment to realise that’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”Everyone in my generation loved players like Ronaldinho and he played with some of the players in this team now so it’s like ‘wow’. I didn’t think international recognition would come so soon but it shows the stature of Rangers and why it was a good decision to come here.”The manager watched the game and congratulated me on my debut goal against Ukraine.”I wouldn’t say it was much of a step up from Rangers but it was good to play against opponents like that because Ukraine have a lot of top players.And it was very good news to be called up to the Nigeria squad again. I’m happy I was able to do enough in the last game to earn a recall.”I knew a few of the lads such as Ola Aina and Alex Iwobi and they all welcomed me and made me feel at home.”I read the headline where a journalist compared me to Okocha after the Ukraine game and that’s putting a lot of pressure on me!”I could have played for England but my parents are from Nigeria and I always watched players like Jay-Jay Okocha and Nwankwo Kanu as a kid.”

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