Some interesting football related facts you probably never knew about

Did you know Ross Barkley is a full blown Nigerian and could have represented Nigeria at the 2014 World Cup as a teenager? (Photo credit: Premierleague.com)

You know Ross Barkley is Nigerian, but what you do not know is that Barkley is his mother’s surname as he refused to use his father’s Surname EFFANGA because his father left him and his mother a week after he was born, he is a Nigerian and he refused to play for Nigeria in 2014

Zlatan Ibrahimovich is of Croatian and Bosnian roots and was born in Sweden to a Muslim Bosnian father and a catholic Croat mother and he didn’t practice either religion for a period of 4 years.

But after he went back to his Christian roots and has since said in public that he is a faithful catholic but honours his Islamic roots by wearing Ibrahimovich on his shirt and also tattooed the name in Arabic on his arm.

He once did a removable tattoo of names of 50 hungry people around the world just to create more awareness on hunger around the world and has a Foundation to fight the cause…

Did you know Virgil Van Dijk and Gini Wijnaldum are both from Suriname? What would have been had the two opted to play for the tiny African nation?

Did you know Paulo Dybala is of polish Roots with his two grandparents from Poland and even confirmed in an interview that he one day wants to settle in Poland after his playing career in order to understand his ancestry

Did you know Antoine Griezmann is from Germany and Portugal and only played for France because his family moved to France?

As a young child, he always wished he played for Portugal national team and even had three junior summer camps try out for the Portuguese U16 which he never made the cut, imagine what would have been if he played for Portugal alongside Cristiano Ronaldo…

Did you know Trent Alexander Arnold is from the USA and his grandmother dated sir ALEX FERGUSON for many years in Glasgow before moving to the states where she got married