Cameroon coach Antonio Conceicao has explained Liverpool defender Joel Matip is not interested to revive his international career.
After playing for the Central African nation at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations and two Fifa World Cup tournaments (2010 and 2014), the 30-year-old turned down subsequent invitations to join the national team.
Matip first played for the Indomitable Lions in a friendly match against Italy in March 2010, and he scored their only goal at the 2014 World Cup which was in a 4-1 loss to the host country, Brazil.
In recent years, Cameroon have made efforts to convince the Liverpool defender to reconsider his international decision but Conceicao has now disclosed that he is not ready to make a U-turn.
“The situation of Matip is not new," the Portuguese manager said, as per BBC Sport.
“There are players who wanted to come back to the national team. For me, there is no need to enlist a player who is not ready to return.
“Matip does not want to return to the national team, that is the issue”.
Cameroon are getting ready to begin their qualifying campaign for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with games against Malawi and Ivory Coast on September 3 and 6 respectively.
After announcing his 28-man squad for the matches, Conceicao disclosed the challenges ahead of the team in Group D.
“The first game that concerns me is Malawi,” he said. “This is a team that is theoretically weaker than Cote d'Ivoire and Cameroon, but which comes to Yaounde to complicate things for us, to cause us problems.
“It's a team that is very strong physically, that gives everything, fights for all the balls. We will have to put a tactical strategy with the creativity of our players to make the difference. Nowadays there are no easy matches.
“A lot of difficulties are expected against Malawi, Mozambique and Cote d'Ivoire. But we are prepared and ready to go into battle.
“We have six games before the Afcon. The World Cup qualifiers are more important. Obviously, if we have a good performance that will help for Afcon.”