My interest in John Obi, as Mikel was known at that time, is understandable because we attended the same secondary school (over 30 years apart) in Jos. Incidentally and just for the records, St. Murumba College, Jos, may be the secondary school to have produced the largest number of footballers to play in Nigeria’s senior national team in history. At the last count I listed 8. In chronological order they are – Mathew Atuegbu, Tijani Salisu Nakande, me, Sam Pam, Patrick Mancha, Benedict Akwuegbu, John Mikel Obi and Sunday Mba! (If there is any other let whoever knows let me know).
I also had a hand in the discovery of the prodigiously talented young and skinny Mikel in the year 2000.
Mikel came to Lagos to participate in that year’s Prosport- Nike International Under-15 tournament that I supervised. He was one of the tournament’s outstanding discoveries. Indeed, that tournament turned out to be his launch pad, exposing him to scouts that soon took him abroad for the start of an odyssey in the world of professional football that is still ongoing.
From what I saw of him in the tournament his eventual move to an academy in Denmark was not a surprise at all. But it was the subsequent bitter struggle between two of the biggest clubs in the English Premiership (Chelsea FC and Manchester United FC) a few years later that really ignited deeper attention. ‘The Blues’ eventually won the battle for his signature and my interest on the young lad was riveted.
Add to that the fact that Jose Mourinho, a young, loquacious and very successful coach at the time, that was making waves in European football following his exploits particularly in Porto FC, was the manager in Chelsea FC. What did the great Mourinho see in this unknown young, tall, thin and straggly player from Nigeria to make the fight over him with Manchester United so fierce, protracted and bitter? Mourinho, was not one reputed for wasting his precious time on any player, particularly a young one that had not made a name in the game. His style usually was to assemble well-established players, to develop a defensive strategy that frustrated opposing teams, to create several counter-attacking options, and to implant one or two sharp-shooters to deliver opportunistic killer punches up front.
He has done it in every one of the many clubs he has handled in Europe, and succeeded, largely! This delicate game of extracting the best from his players and using the media to drive positively effective agitations that keeps his team on the edge has kept him several moves ahead of everyone as in a classic game of chess. His increasing chest of European Club trophies is clear evidence that his strategy works and has earned him the sobriquet of ‘the special one’!
So, Mourinho does not waste his time on frivolities like keeping players that do not fit into his philosophy of delivering immediately and winning all the time in his squad! So, that he recruited Mikel at such a tender age (18) meant that the lad must have been truly special!
He it was that converted Mikel from the attacking midfield position that he played as a teenager to the defensive midfield role that he specially created for him. Since then, through a period of 10 years in Chelsea FC, Mikel has become one of the constant features in every successive Chelsea manager’s teams.
This new season Mourinho and Mikel have re-united again in the new Chelsea FC line-up, but with Mikel only in the fringes.
This development is not what has caught my full attention. What did is another deft and totally unexpected move to bring in a 32 year-old African player, considered to be already in the twilight of his career, to take charge of the blunt attack of Chelsea FC this season.
The moment Mourinho was denied the service of Wayne Rooney by Manchester United, a choice that would have been absolutely brilliant, his next move, for its bravado, is in my humble opinion a masterstroke. He went in search of Samuel Eto’o Fils, one of his former ‘warriors’ in Inter Milan FC, a true legend of African football, the most successful, most accomplished and most honoured African football player in history! Only George Weah’s World’s Best Player award is missing in Eto’s rich and bulging chest of football honours.
Samuel Eto’o Fils went to 6 African Cup of Nations championships, won two, scored the highest number of goals (18) in the championship’s history, was named Africa’s Best Player 4 times, won the European Champions League 3 times with two clubs (Inter Milan and Barcelona), won an Olympic Gold medal with Cameroons, and is reported to be, currently, the highest paid footballer in history! Meanwhile, his total goal haul in European football are unmatched by any African player, ever!
That’s the man Mourinho has gone for at a ripe age of 32 to come and do what he does not believe Fernando Torres and all the other ‘pretenders’ can do! As Eto began to wind down his career, he moved to the less-prestigious Russian league for the money rather than for the game. It is from Anzhi Makhachkala FC (I never heard of the club before Eto moved there) that Mourinho has gone to pluck him and to bring them to a totally new experience.
Eto, in all his illustrious career all over Europe, never played in the Premiership! So, this is a totally unexpected, exciting but challenging move that will mark, even at this late stage of his career, another first for him.
That’s why I am excited. How would he fare. How would he cope and justify the confidence and risk that Mourinho is taking by bringing him to the difficult Barclays Premier League? How much more can his body, ravaged by age, take? How would the several injuries he has sustained in the past few years affect his performance in a league that requires extra sharpness, speed and ruggedness for a striker to succeed? This latest acquisition of one player has captured the imagination of the football world.
The next few months will tell. But this is a gamble that is already exciting and will be considered brilliant if it succeeds. It will also reinforce the view of those who say that Jose Mourinho is the ultimate mastermind of the game of football.
I have never been a fan of Chelsea FC.
Yet, it does not matter that anyone likes the club or not. This season many people, like me, will be caught up in following Jose Mourinho’s return to the Premiership and to Chelsea. But, surely, no African will miss the anticipated drama of the entry of, perhaps, Africa’s greatest striker of all time as he leads the attack of ‘the Blues’ in the BPL for the rest of the season!
This season I shall be watching a lot of Chelsea FC
