Nigeria's GOATs: Introduction and 10-9

In September, I idly tweeted my desire to produce a series on Nigeria’s greatest ever footballers. I use the term ‘idly’ because even though I realised it would be a grave, cumbersome undertaking, I could not have imagined just how grave and cumbersome. 

My reach possibly exceeding my grasp has never particularly bothered me. I am nothing if not thick-skinned, and I have, over the last two years, learnt a great deal about detaching my ego from my opinions. The upshot of this is that I am happier than ever to be wrong; authenticity matters more to me than absolute rectitude, especially when the subject is something so fraught and apt to spark debate regardless of who produces it.

The best I can do to defend my choices here is to explain the rationale behind them, and then I will leave it up to the reader to judge whether or not I have any right at all to do this, and if my choices have any objective merit. In this case, “objective” means not only well-reasoned, but also free of strawman arguments and appeals to authority—if your only rebuttal is that, on account of not being hoary, I cannot possibly know what I am talking about, then it is a far from helpful rejoinder, for me or for you. So, let us begin.

First, what are we trying to do here?

The goal is to present Nigeria’s 10 greatest male footballers of all time. Now, “all time” is a mostly unwieldy qualifier, and has come into misuse most acutely following the rise of social and digital media. However, I am fairly confident in sticking to that in this instance for two reasons.

First, Nigerian football has actually not been around very long. An organised league has only been running for 50 years, and the first edition of the Cup – then known as the War Memorial Cup – took place in 1942. These are more manageable stretches of time for the purposes of appraisal, even allowing for the infamous paucity of records.

For the second reason, it is necessary to first talk about the criteria and parameters. There is a distinction – at least in my mind and, therefore, for the purposes of this – between ‘greatest’ and ‘best’. Were the latter the aim, I simply would not bother: ‘best’ is a measure of ability, strictly speaking. However, greatness means so much more. It is an aggregate of a number of different factors, all taken together to create a holistic picture. 

I have tried to deconstruct the concept, and have also borrowed some inspiration for my methodology from Miguel Delaney’s old pet project ‘The Football Pantheon’. In order to produce this list, I will rate players on these five criteria.

Ability [Scale: 1-10]: Relative to other Nigerian footballers in his position, just how good was the player in question? For example, a rating of 10 here is an indication that, purely on ability, I consider the player to be the best to ever turn out for Nigeria in his position.

Club career [Scale 1-5]: How much success did a player achieve in his club career? He will not necessarily be penalised for not playing abroad, especially in a less Eurocentric era, and all topflight league titles will be treated exactly the same. To do otherwise would be to ignore necessary context. Also note that it is not enough to have been merely present: the player must have played an active part in the achievement in order to be eligible.

International career [Scale: 1-5]: How central was the player to the success of the national team while he was an active international? Longevity is also taken into account here, as I believe consistent excellence over an extended period should be recognised. If two players had the same quantity of success and quality of performance on the international stage, a higher score should and will be assigned to the one who played for a longer period. Longevity will therefore function as a multiplier: 10+ years equals a multiplier of 1, 9 years: 0.9, 8 years: 0.8, and so on. Note that it is not enough to have been merely present: the player must have played an active part in the achievement in order to be eligible. I have also, after much consideration, decided against taking the Olympics into account. Atlanta 1996 remains Nigeria’s finest hour on the global stage, but even though I am uncomfortable with its designation as an age grade competition, that is, technically speaking, what it is. 

Social impact [Scale: 1-5]: How much did the player transcend football? How much did he influence the popular understanding of his role/position? How much did his career put Nigeria on the map as a footballing entity?

Leadership [Scale: 1-5]: How much did his peers look to him in times of distress? How much of an inspirational presence did he have? How much personal responsibility did he take?

• As ability is the one of the above five parameters that is entirely dependent on the expression of the individual, it is the most relevant differentiator, and is therefore the only one ranked on a scale of 10, rather than 5.

• In the event of a tie, the ranking will be determined by the aggregate of the first three criteria – priority given to on-field factors.

A couple of necessary caveats at this juncture. To begin with, I am aware that three of these criteria are subjective, the last one particularly so. In the interest of fairness, I will, where available, rely on testimony from their peers. Again, the reader is free to disagree but, in doing so, it is important to understand the full ramification of a term like, say, ‘leadership’. There is more to it than wearing an armband. (For the other two, I have come up with a near-scientific formula, the key to which can be found here.)

Second, it has not escaped my notice that ‘social impact’ is best assessed with the passage of time. As such, players whose careers ended in the last decade are unlikely to have the same size of footprint socio-culturally as those who hung up their boots earlier.

However, there is no satisfactory mitigation for this beyond freezing all football for 20-30 years; it is not my intention to penalise people for when they are born, it just is what it is.

Hopefully, from the criteria, it is apparent what the aforementioned second reason is: as organised league football only began in 1972, it is impossible to fairly and adequately evaluate the claims of the likes of Asuquo Ekpe, Segun Olumodeji, Albert Onyeanwuna, Teslim Balogun, Thompson Usiyan and Godwin Achebe. 

Also, Nigeria’s first appearance at the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) only came in 1963; they would not qualify again for another 13 years. In terms of international achievement, players from that era are going to suffer comparatively, regardless of my kindest intentions. As such, I feel fairly justified in leaving them out, especially as there is no other (minimum) proxy for national team achievement beyond performances at the AFCON.

Now we have got all the preamble out of the way, let us look at who comes in at 10 and 9. There will be two subsequent editions, each addressing four players; the third edition will, by the end, reveal the person I believe to be Nigeria’s greatest ever footballer.

10. Austin Jay-Jay Okocha

Active years: 1990-2008

Honours: Africa Cup of Nations x1, UEFA Intertoto Cup x1

Ability: 10

Club career: 0.5

International career: 5

Social impact: 5

Leadership: 2

Total: 22.5

In order to sign Jay-Jay Okocha in the summer of 1998, Paris Saint-Germain needed to not only break the French transfer record, but also effectively sequester him in a hotel in Istanbul during negotiations with Fenerbahce. But erstwhile PSG president Charles Bietry would not be denied. “He is a creator, an inventor, without doubt the best dribbler in the world,” he told Le Parisien.

There can be no outrage in stating that Okocha is the most skillful, talented footballer to ever come out of Nigeria. Never before or since has there been a player so casually brilliant, so capable of doing as he willed, so mesmeric in terms of ball handling. “In pure technique, Okocha was better than Ronaldinho,” former teammate Bernard Mendy said.

Why then is he not ranked higher?

The simple answer is this: no one did as little with as much as Jay-Jay had. All of that flair, all of that derring-do; it all amounted to little outside of the Nigeria national team. With the Super Eagles, Okocha starred at two World Cups (his performances in 1998 went a long way toward convincing PSG) and hit all the heights possible, even if it took until his penultimate AFCON for him to properly take ownership of an international tournament. At club level, however, his record was thoroughly underwhelming: he won an Intertoto Cup and nothing else of note.

In fact, Bolton aside (and it is for his spell there that he has earned the score assigned to him here), one could argue he left every top-flight club he played for worse off than he met them. Even Fenerbahce, who brought him in as reigning Turkish champions, subsequently lost ground at the top of the Super Lig table. For all his ability, coaches at club level came to think of him as a riddle to solve rather than as an asset, playing him in a variety of different roles and positions.

Considering he worked with a future multiple Champions League winner in Jupp Heynckes, there is some irony in the fact that it took Sam Allardyce, a manager who has come to be (somewhat unfairly) derided as a troglodyte, to finally elicit a consistently high level of output from Okocha. It was just as well that Allardyce did too, as it introduced a wider audience to just what this consummate magician was about, spawning the ultimate ‘streets won’t forget’ player.

His excellence, after all, came in moments: the embarrassing of Oliver Kahn, his japing against Italy in Massachusetts, fiddling while the midfield burned against Denmark, sombreros over Ray Parlour and Roy Keane, his sublime strikes, four years apart, against Cameroon; in the context of the matches, these were mostly hedonistic exhibitions of excess, but taken out of that context and clipped into highlight reels, they formed a collage of a player who was easy to be bewitched by.

No one, as it happened, was immune to that witchery. So completely did Okocha’s skills fascinate that they created not only an unrealistic standard for all who followed, but also a misunderstanding of his own role altogether. Everyone either wanted to be him or was judged by him, even to the detriment of their own natural inclinations on the pitch. 

Yet, in the truest sense, the effect of Okocha was to decorate rather than to define. He was, first, second and last, an entertainer. “No matter how high the pressure is, it's still only a game; it's all about enjoying what you're doing,” he said. “People are paying for their tickets to come and watch you. They want to go home happy. If it's all about kicking and running, they will not go home smiling.”

This made him a singularly poor choice as captain. There is a direct causal link between his unexplained absences post 2004 and Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, but in the midst of all that recalcitrance, he still found it in him to provide an exhibition-style performance in a 3-0 win over Zimbabwe in Harare.

If ever anything captured the essence of the man.

9. Sunday Oliseh

Active years: 1989-2006

Honours: Eredivisie x1, Bundesliga x1, KNVB Beker x2, Africa Cup of Nations x1

Ability: 8

Club career: 3.5

International career: 4.5

Social impact: 3

Leadership: 4

Total: 23

Jo Bonfrere had a problem. 

Nigeria’s triumph at the 1994 AFCON, its second in history, was not just the culmination of Clemens Westerhof’s work, but was widely expected to ring in the sort of dynastic dominance that the continent’s most populous nation had never previously managed. 

That promise, on account of political interference, failed to materialise: not only were the Super Eagles unavailable to defend their crown two years after, but they would be banned from the 1998 edition as well.

Co-hosting in 2000, therefore, took on even greater significance, the consensus being that, had Nigeria been present in 1996 (and probably 1998 as well), neither South Africa nor Egypt would have won their first and fourth titles respectively. It was, in essence, a delayed defence.

The Super Eagles quickly set about proving that, dismissing 1996 runners-up Tunisia and topping Group D comfortably. In the quarter-finals, Senegal were expected to be a breeze, merely a stop in the road to a bragging rights semi-final against South Africa.

The Teranga Lions did not read the script, however, and went ahead inside the opening 10 minutes. They held that lead for over an hour as Nigeria, oddly lacking vitality and ideas, toiled in vain in the Lagos evening heat. Staring catastrophe in the face, Bonfrere threw one last Hail Mary.

Captain Sunday Oliseh, gravely unwell since the second match against Congo and only discharged from hospital two days before the game, was summoned with 10 minutes to play. In the following 15 minutes of play, the Ajax midfielder dug his country out of a massive hole, assisting the equaliser and setting up the winner; once more affirming his greatness.

His legend had already been bound and sealed when, as part of the 1994 vintage, he starred in the AFCON success of the mid 1990s. Rashidi Yekini rightly got all the plaudits for his goalscoring, but there is a strong case to be made that no midfielder in the history of Nigerian football has dominated an international tournament quite like Oliseh did that year in Tunisia. 

En route to the title, the Super Eagles scored nine goals; Oliseh either assisted or played the pass before the assist for five of them, and in the only match in which he did neither (against Egypt), Nigeria failed to score altogether.

This was all the more remarkable because Oliseh was a defensive midfielder, the one player on whom the structure of the team hung without the ball. It was a role to which he was eminently suited, as his style of play fused discipline with and without the ball, expert tackling ability, rational decision-making and distribution over all distances into one solid mass of midfield excellence. 

Of his international debut in 1993, Segun Odegbami wrote, many years later, “At the end of that match, my conclusion was that a tape of Sunday Oliseh’s performance needed to be produced and distributed to all football schools and academies worldwide, for a perfect demonstration of the art of defensive midfield play.”

That idea of him as a role model is one the player himself took extremely seriously. As captain of the national side, Oliseh led by almost ascetic example. He was stern, inflexible, uber-professional and vocal, qualities that endeared him to coaches but not necessarily to his teammates, both at international and club level, or even to the general public. It bred a grudging respect in his colleagues, and a paranoia in Oliseh that somewhat soured the end of his career.

It has also largely kept him from getting the love and plaudits he unquestionably deserves, which is a bit of a shame. For many years, the received wisdom is that, where defensive midfielders were concerned, escaping overt notice was part of the job description. That has changed in modern football, with a team’s playing idea now hinging on the style of its deepest midfielder. In that sense, Oliseh was very much ahead of his time: the speedy, direct, wing-based style now considered the platonic ideal of Nigerian football would have been impossible without him.