CYRIEL DESSERS’ post-Rangers career has suffered a nightmare start.
Having left the club just over a week ago, the striker now finds himself on the receiving end of brutal criticism from his OWN country’s national FA.
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Dessers, 30, brought his two-year stint at Rangers to an end on transfer deadline day last week.
After a summer of doubt surrounding his future, he completed a permanent switch to Greek giants Panathinaikos in a £3.5million deal.
Despite putting up some impressive goal scoring numbers, Dessers had proved a somewhat divisive figure at Ibrox following his arrival from Cremonese in 2023.
He bagged 52 goals in 116 games for the Light Blues and was the top scorer in the Scottish Premiership last season after netting 18 times.
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Dessers’ 29 goals in all competitions last season equalled his career-best tally for a single campaign.
However, he didn’t always win over the fans due to his knack of missing as many chances as he scored.
With the Gers adding Bojan Miovski and Youssef Chermiti to bolster their attack towards the end of the transfer window, it was little surprise when Dessers moved on.
After joining Panathinaikos, Dessers headed-off on international duty with Nigeria.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t been a great week for the Super Eagles.
Despite the increase in teams at next year’s World Cup, the African giants now need a major turnaround in fortunes to qualify.
Despite beating Rwanda 1-0 on Friday, a 1-1 draw last night against South Africa looks to have proved very costly.
Nigeria have drawn a staggering FIVE of their eight Group C qualifiers.
Despite losing only once, that leaves them languishing in third in their group.
Should they finish there, they will be ELIMINATED from qualifying contention altogether.
Dessers featured in both qualifiers across the past few days but has endured a nightmare time of things.
Now, the national FA of Nigeria – the Nigeria Football Federation – have unleashed some criticism towards him.
Dessers came on as a first half substitute in the first game against Rwanda – before being subbed-off himself late in the second 45.
He then started the clash with South Africa but ended up being hooked at half-time.
And in a rather bizarre turn of events, the NFF’s own summary of the game has levelled some rather brutal criticism at Dessers.
The article on the official NFF website reads: “Cyriel Dessers, who had an unimpressive game in Uyo where he turned out to be a substitute that was substituted, did not have a better game as he was too slow to latch onto passes, could not win aerial balls and did little in bringing alive the Nigerian attack.”
Dessers was the only player to be personally called out in the article.
The comments have angered Nigerian fans who have flooded social media to criticise the FA.
One fan blasted: “Whoever drafted and approved this rubbish quote from NFF is shameless and wicked.”
A second fumed: “Imagine this coming from your own federation about one of your players.”
A third commented read: “We are not a serious nation. Now we blame the players for the poor decisions we made.”
Another hit out saying: “That section on Dessers is absolutely nasty.
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“Trying to scapegoat your own player especially when the whole team played poor.
“I can’t believe this is actually real.”
A further comment blasted: “Who wrote and released this article about Cyriel Dessers?
“I think NFF has something against him. Like, why would you paint all the blame on him?
“I don’t know if he’ll ever honour a national invite again.”
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Nigeria trail group leaders South Africa by six points and are three points behind Benin who are second.
The group winners qualify for the World Cup and the runners-up will be in contention to move into another round of qualifiers.
Third place – where Nigeria currently sit – will be eliminated.
Nigeria still have to play Benin at home so they could still catch them.
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But they can only reach a maximum of 17 points and as it stands, that looks unlikely to be enough to get to the play-off round.
Only the best four of the nine group runners-up will make it.
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