John Mikel Obi may be the most under-rated football great in Nigeria's history.
A player who has played only at the very top of European football (for 5 years), in a club considered one of the best in Europe, and in a team that boasts an all-international cast from various countries, Mikel surely cannot be an ordinary football player. Yet, since his emergence on the national football stage in 2005, I have not seen Nigerians kindle support for Mikel the way they do when players like Jay Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Finidi George and a number of other truly exceptional players graced our football fields. When any of these players were not in Nigeria's line-up there was usually a spontaneous outburst of emotion, but not with Mikel.
Even when Samson Siasia dropped him from the Olympic team on the eve of the Beijing Games, after he led the under-20 national team to the finals of the World Youth Championship in Holland, there was no national outcry or outburst of protest. It was almost like 'he had it coming'.
In public Mikel has always been rather subdued and lacking in emotive expression. This may be partly due to his attitude to invitations when he started out as a young teenager in Chelsea. He was not in a hurry to come to the national camp when he had not secured a place in the English premiership team that was brimming with talent from all over the world.
Leaving his foreign team to fight for a place in any of the Nigerian national teams would have been a distraction and might have affected how quickly he secured a permanent position in a team that had a scrupulous coach like Mourinho in charge. Mourinho needed a player's total commitment to the club for them to become regulars.
One thing was apparent though. Mikel was a great talent and everyone who saw him play as a child knew that. What was not agreed, even among football coaches, was what position to use him on the field. That matter was settled by Mourinho. He converted Mikel from his original central midfield role to a more defensive role in front of the back four.
Mikel has been stuck in that position ever since. Every attempt by other coaches to use him elsewhere has fallen flat.
Slowly but surely Mikel Obi has grown. His football has developed so much that he has become one of the most permanent fixtures in the Chelsea line-up in the past two seasons.
It is, therefore, rather shocking that this year, when Mikel has finally secured a regular place in Chelsea's midfield and is playing some of the best football of his life, he has not been nominated for Africa's Player of the Year Award. This is despite the fact that the continent has been finding it difficult to bring up new greats to take over from Eto’o, Essien and Drogba, who have dominated the awards list more than any others this past decade.
The situation was so bad that, to break the monotony of those names, CAF had to give two of the last three awards to Kanoute and Adebayor: players who were not convincingly deserving of them. For that move Eto’o alone could very easily have won the award an embarrassing four or five times.
This year, Ghana's Asamoah Gyan has come in to 'rescue' the situation. I believe that this weekend he should have been crowned king of African football even though the football the young man has played this past year was surely way behind the standard displayed by several of those who won the same awards in the past.
At the time when Africa had the likes of Rashidi, Abedi, Weah, Kalusha, Kanu, Jay Jay, and so on, Gyan would have stood no chance of even a nomination. But here we are. Even as starved as the continent is of exceptionally brilliant footballers, Mikel Obi is bypassed. That’s my grouse. There is something not quite okay about the appreciation of the qualities of Mikel Obi, and this even goes beyond Nigeria.
Mikel is not your typical “wow” player. Reactions to his performance have always been economical. That is why Samson Siasia dropped him from his Olympic team and the heavens did not fall. Of course, I believe that Mikel, with his talent, would have made the difference in Siasia's Olympic team. However, we will never know if his inclusion would have been enough to make a difference between the silver medal the team got and gold. I also believe that his absence in Nigeria's midfield during the World Cup in South Africa reduced the strength of Nigeria's ordinary team.
The truth is that, up till now, Mikel Obi has not established himself in the minds of Nigerians as a player that must not be missed in the Super Eagles line-up for any match. There is something about him that makes him less than who he really is in football.
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.
Since then, Mikel (as he is now known) has competed with Makelele, Essien and Ballack, for the position of defensive midfielder in the Chelsea line-up. In the past two seasons he has won the battle and now owns the position.
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.
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.
