9. Jay-Jay Okocha
Augustine Azuka Okocha, better known by his nickname Jay-Jay (inherited from his older brother James, who was also a footballer) is probably reknown for being one of the most fantastic African flair players. The Nigerian attacking midfielder was born in 1973, first playing football “with any round thing we could find”. His first team was Enugu Rangers, which he joined in 1990 before switching to 1.FC Saarbrücken in the German 2nd division. He only lasted months there before moving to the Bundesliga (top tier) at Eintracht Frankfurt in December one year later. There he impressed; especially against Karlsruhe where he scored the Goal of the Season on Oliver Kahn – his team broke on the counter before he received the ball. He didn’t just slot it in however, he did his usual tricks and flicks past 3 or 4 players before slotting it in with class. He also played with Ghana top striker Tony Yeboah in his time there, but after a falling out with then manager Jupp Heynckes they both wound up leaving the club. His next stop was Fenerbahce, signing for £1 million in 1996. There, he struck 30 goals in 62 matches – plenty of them free-kicks – and even became a Turkish citizen under the name “Muhammet Yavuz”. He triumphed in the Chancellor & Ataturk Cups in his final year there.
By 1998, French capital club Paris Saint-German splashed out £14 million to make him the most expensive African player at the time. He scored 12 goals in 84 matches, linking up with a certain dribbler from Brazil called Ronaldinho, winning the “Trophee Des Champions” and the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2001. In 2002, he joined England’s Bolton Wanderers on a free, where he again scored a Goal of the Season against West Ham. He also won their 2005 Player of the Year. He spent a total of 4 years there, captaining them for 2 years before his move to Qatar SC. He scored 6 goals in 41 games there before returning to help Hull City gain promotion to the Premier League for the first time in 100 years with 18 matches in 2008, before his retirement at the end of the season.
His debut for Nigeria came against the Ivory Coast as a 20yr-old, but it was his second game that made him a hit – he scored a direct free-kick to take Algeria from 0-1 to a 4-1 win against Algeria. In 1994, he won the Africa Cup of Nations and lost to runners-up Italy in the round of 16. In 1995, he won the (now-defunct) Afro-Asian Cup of Nations. 1 year later, he was part of the Nigerian ‘Dream Team’ which won gold at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. He won Nigerian Footballer of the year 7 times, as well as the first 2 BBC African Footballer of the Year Awards – all of this in just 73 matches, with 14 goals. His legacy however, is much more than that – it’s as one of the greatest entertainers that football has ever seen. He brought the silkiest that African football has to the World Cup, to England, Turkey, Germany and Qatar.
