@kaybaba99
Dear Mikel,
It will surprise you to hear from me in such an open forum like this but I’ve decided that this is the best way to reach you for the simple reason that, unlike most Super Eagles players and other Nigerian players based abroad, you are the most difficult player to reach by any journalist, especially local sports writers like myself.
As a matter of fact, I can count on the fingers of my left hand the number of times you’ve granted a direct interview to any Nigerian news medium. Actually, the last time I read anything directly from you was the exclusive interview you did with Kayode Tijani which was run in Complete Sports some years back. So you see why your media elusiveness has made this medium inevitable?
Okay, having done with the formalities, let us get into the real reason for this public letter. First, let me offer my congratulations on the momentous occasion of your first start of the season in the 3-1 misadventure at Everton last Sunday. Though you were pulled out after just 55 mins, nobody can single you out for blame in a generally wobbly team performance. That game, however, was just your eighth start in Chelsea’s last 43 Premier League games dating back to the start of last season and, I must confess, these numbers are appalling for a player of your ‘pedigree’.
Last Friday, while I was watching some old football films like I usually do in my spare moments, I came across a compilation of the best moments of the 2005 FIFA U-20 World Cup competition and, needless to say, you featured more prominently than any other player in the short clip. More, I daresay, than Lionel Messi who was inexplicably picked as the MVP of the tournament ahead of you.
That tournament was instructive in your career, notably because it heralded your arrival on the international stage even though the world had a taste of what you had to offer briefly at the U-17 Championship two years earlier in Finland as you and the Golden Eaglets were painfully eliminated by lots after finishing tied with Costa Rica.
Despite being embroiled in a transfer saga between Chelsea and Manchester United, you led the Flying Eagles impressively from the front as they marched to the finals of the WYC. And even though the team fell at the final hurdle to two penalty goals from Messi, you guys had done enough to capture the imagination of the whole world.
Lest anyone forgot, this was the glowing testimonial that you got from the FIFA Technical Study Group at the end of the competition:
“Although football is a team sport first and foremost, outstanding individuals still have an important role to play. These players can use their exceptional skills to influence the flow of play or even decide the final result of a game. They enjoy special status in their team, serving as key elements in a team’s game plan and team-mates always try to play the ball to them. They give the game a little something extra and can be relied upon to make a difference when it counts. Players of this ilk in the tournament included Messi (18, Argentina), Mikel (9, Nigeria) and Cesc (17, Spain). John Obi Mikel combative playmaker, good vision, dictated pace of game and launched most of Nigeria’s attacks”
At the end of the competition, your stock had risen considerably and you had your pick of teams, preferring to go to Chelsea where you had the world in front of you. And, to be candid, you have done extremely well for yourself at Chelsea winning titles beyond anyone’s expectations. As at the last count, you had won 2 Premier League titles, 4 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, 1 Shield, 1 Champions League and 1 Europa League. That, in any man’s language, is a whale of titles to win in one career lifetime by any individual and I’m happy for you.
However, if I’m happy for you as I’m sure a vast majority of our over 160million compatriots are, the question I really want to ask is if you are happy and satisfied with what you have achieved, knowing you have the quality and talent to achieve even much more. The more I think about you and your achievement, the more I’m forced to draw an analogy with a Porsche 918 (reputedly the world’s fastest car) which is rejoicing after out-speeding a Volkswagen Beetle when, in actual fact, it has the ability to out-run a Bugatti Veyron only if it would just apply itself a little more.
I’m convinced you are definitely better than that and the trophies you have won in your time at Chelsea – 10 in the last 10 years – is a testimony to your talent and ability but, in your moment of clarity, do you ask yourself if you have achieved the utmost your talent promised right from those early days from St. Murumba College Jos? Fine, you may be a long way away from the fresh-faced kid who wowed all those who saw him play.
This was what Chief Segun Odegbami, who knew you way back in the early days, wrote in 2010:
“I knew him first as John Obi. He added the Mikel when he arrived in Europe. He was 15 years old when I met him, and he was a student of Saint Murumba College, Jos; my Alma Mater. He came with the school’s under-16 team to take part in that year’s (2001) Nike International Under-16 football tournament in Lagos, which I was organising on behalf of Ugomba Noel Okorougo. The representatives from Plateau were the most impressive team and John, tall and skinny, was the undoubted star of the tournament. I was not surprised to learn that he prematurely left school and was soon after taken from that tournament to an academy in Denmark, where he spent the next two years developing into the player that was to become subject of a serious tussle between two of Europe’s biggest clubs — Manchester United and Chelsea FC. Every successive coach in Chelsea has found him irresistible. His work rate is tremendous, his tackling skills are effective and sometimes too hard and clumsy, but his passing skills are a delight to behold — pinpoint-accurate. Whenever he drives forward with the ball (which he does not do often enough) he is a beauty to watch.”
This is a glowing testimonial from arguably one of Nigeria’s greatest footballer who should know it when he sees a star.
At 28, you should be entering into an exciting phase of your career where you are primed for one last big payday before resorting to the serenity of Asia or the MLS when you hit your mid 30s. However, while your contemporaries are dominating contests in the highest arenas of the game, we are still faced with the rather academic question of where exactly is your best position on the pitch.
So, I ask, what went wrong between then and now. In the intervening 10 years, you have gone from a player full of potential adjudged only second being Messi in your age-grade to a perpetual bench-warmer at Chelsea where games have become so rare to come by for you.
Of course, age, that number one stealer of time, is the first culprit. Between then and now, you have aged 10 years more and now, after John Terry, Chelsea’s longest-serving player. That, ordinarily would be a point to be happy about but for this worrying lack of game-time. Though you have played an average of 20.4 Premier League games in the last decade, a cursory look at your real-time involvement will tell a different picture. Stats do lie, you’ll agree with me don’t you?
I also feel the kind of players you have had to battle against in a bid to get to the first team has been daunting. First you had to contend with Claude Makelele and bid your time until he left and you made the position your own.
Since his second coming, Mourinho has made it tacitly clear that he would not be putting as much hope in you as other managers before him. In Mourinho’s second coming, you participated in only 20 Premier League games but started just seven.
And despite the Special One saying recently that: “Mikel is, after John (Terry), the guy with most years of Chelsea”, he has not shown you enough respect to justify that rating. Rather, last season, he brought back Nemanja Matic to the club and effectively handed him your position. The Serbian, I must confess, has shown with his performances, that he’s one of Europe’s best in that position but you are not even second behind him. Rather, the Brazilian Ramires is preferred ahead of you. Even the young Kurt Zouma, a natural defender, has been deployed to play in your position while you sit on the bench.
For good measure, I’m not the only one who thinks Mourinho is wholly responsible for putting you in this situation. Ed Dove, writing for Bleacherreport a while back had this to say on the issue:
“It is easy to forget, but John Obi hasn’t always been the lumbering, bumbling defensive midfielder often spotted waddling around the centre of the pitch at Stamford Bridge. Once he was a glorious attacking talent, striding around the turf with a near-delirious uproar.
Mourinho, aware of the attacking menace already provided by Frank Lampard and Michael Essien; realising the imminent need of replacing defensive stalwart Makelele; seduced, possibly, by the pervading paradigm of the imposing West African midfielder, sought to redevelop the Nigerian into a far less provocative talent. It soon became apparent that Makelele was impossible to replace; or if not replace, replicate.”
Odegbami hazards a guess as to what could have been wrong and I quote him again:
“Unfortunately, two things have held back his ultimate recognition as a truly great player. The first is that he plays sideways and backwards too much. He also does not exude the ‘hunger’ to win like Michael Essien, for example, whose determination to win drives him like a man possessed and infects his teammates whenever he plays. John Mikel Obi is a great player, who has not applied the best of himself enough to make the world appreciate his true worth. I see Mikel becoming, in the near future, not just Africa’s next Footballer of the Year, but a player acknowledged by all in the continent as the genius that I believe he is.”
Whether we are wrong about it or not, this is not an attempt to ridicule you and your achievements. I’m only concerned because, as our biggest player in Europe, you should be leading the Nigerian national team to glory especially now that we are perpetually ‘building’ a new team with each newly-appointed manager.
You showed us a glimpse of the Mikel that you are capable of being, first at the AFCON 2013 and then subsequently at the Confederations Cup and the World Cup in Brazil. It is that Mikel that every responsible Nigerian want you to remain and be a leader for club and country because your talent deserves nothing less.
To do this, you need to play regularly at club level in other to have the moral and right and physical fitness to lead the Super Eagles back to glory days.
Unfortunately, your body language does not seem to agree with what I’m proposing. Only last month you said in an interview that:
“I have two years left on my contract here (at Chelsea) and want to see them out. I am happy here and we will see what happens. I do want to stay, the manager wants me to stay so I don’t have any issues. The manager has told me he wants me to stay. This is like my family now. Every time I come to work it’s like coming in to see my family.”
I would lie if I said I don’t know that feeling. I’ve worked with my present employers at Complete Communications here too for a long time, almost as long as you have stayed in Chelsea, and I can tell you I’ve built relationships that will last for several lifetimes here but nobody will try to stand in my way where issues of career advancements are concerned.
Breaking bonds could be hard and the fear of leaving certainty for uncertainty is daunting but a man must do what he ought to do and moving away from Stamford Bridge is the right thing to do at this moment in time.
For yourself, your career and your country, there won’t be a better time than now to do that than now.
Thank you for your time and patience to read through this unsolicited piece of advice.
Sporting regards,
Kayode Ogundare
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