Despite extensive rumours, Nigeria's high-profile
players are largely still at the clubs they were at last
season. Why have so few deals been done?
African players have largely
been out of the transfer
headlines this summer.
There was Serge Aurier’s move to Paris Saint-
Germain, of course, while Didier Drogba has returned
to Chelsea, but largely, the gossip columns have been
dominated by the likes of Luis Suarez, James
Rodriguez, Diego Costa and Alexis Sanchez.
When the news of Ideye Brown's move to English
Premier League side West Bromwich Albion was
revealed, many Nigerian fans celebrated it as a good
move. Others, however, considered it demotion—
Ideye was, after all, leaving Dynamo Kyiv, domestic
giants and regular European competitors for a team
that struggled to avoid the drop to the Championship
last season.
During the World Cup, there were reports linking some
of the Eagles' top performers to top European clubs,
but with the EPL season only days away, those
moves have largely yet to materialise.
Kenneth Omeruo, arguably Nigeria's best outfield
player at the World Cup, returned back to
Middlesbrough, where he had spent the second half of
last season.
This particular transfer move raised a few eyebrows,
as many Super Eagles fans struggled to find any
viable reason behind his parent club, Chelsea's,
decision to send one of their highly-rated youngsters
to a Championship side rather than earn some pre-
season playing time, like Kurt Zouma or Nathan Ake.
Similarly, the likes of Michel Babatunde and
Emmanuel Emenike were linked with moves to major
European leagues but, at the time of writing, remain at
the same clubs they were at last season. John Obi
Mikel, Victor Moses and Ogenyi Onazi have all also
been named as transfer targets for one side or
another, but the reported interest is yet to lead to
anything substantial.
The question many are asking is “Why then are the
Super Eagles' stars finding it difficult to land decent
moves to bigger clubs?”
For some time now it has seemed that players from
the African continent are less highly-rated than their
compatriots from Europe and South America.
It's obvious that the European media’s player ratings
is part of the reason why clubs generate interest in
them.
Are African players truly getting the credit they
deserve?
John Obi Mikel has been linked with a move away,
like teammate Ashley Cole, but remains a Chelsea
player
For example, at the World Cup, after the Round of 16,
Omeruo was statistically above many more
experienced and established centre-backs in Europe,
but he rarely got rave reviews and ratings. A player
like Raphael Varane, however, who made fewer
tackles, blocks and interceptions despite playing a
game more, was nominated for the FIFA Young Player
of the Year award.
Such a nomination would surely have made Ômeruo a
major transfer target for most European clubs.
Everton, after being linked with Onazi, went ahead to
sign Bosnia midfielder Muhamed Besic. No doubt
Besic is not a better option than Onazi, who had a
better tackle-completion rate, made a higher
frequency of key passes and even managed a better
shot accuracy.
80 per cent of Besic's passes at the World Cup were
sideways and backwards. Onazi also offers an
appreciable amount of experience, having played for
SS Lazio in Serie A for two seasons now. Besic,
however, only joined Everton from the relative
backwater of the Hungarian league.
Are African players being acknowledged as they
should be? One suspects that Yaya Toure would agree
with my cynicism.
It’s a well-known fact that before most of the clubs
competing in Europe's top five leagues bid for a
player, his club records, and not only his performance
in tournaments like the World Cup, are considered.
This is where many of Nigeria's World Cup stars fall
short.
For instance, a player like Emmanuel Emenike, who
scored 12 times and provided nine assists last
season for Fenerbahce in a less-reputable league,
cannot be considered a prolific striker. It may well
represent a major gamble to recruit someone who is
not “tried and tested” despite his seemingly abundant
qualities. He might have also provided two assists at
the World Cup, but he also failed to find the back of the
net and this does not augur well for his EPL transfer
ambitions.
The transient and sometimes unstable conditions that
African players need to work in to make the leap from
the continent’s domestic leagues to one of Europe’s
“Big Five” are not favourable, and too often, would-be
successes fall by the wayside. Just look at someone
like Stephen Worgu, one or two bad career moves,
and we’re still waiting for him to make that long-
awaited transition to one of Europe’s major leagues.
It may never happen for him, but surely a player of
comparable ability, raised in a European nation, would
have been afforded every chance to succeed.
In summary, one can only hope that the Super Eagles
players will have an impressive season with their
various clubs. This, coupled with a fantastic outing at
the 2015 Afcon, should help make a good case for
moves to bigger clubs.
Perhaps in a year’s time there will be many more
Nigerian players celebrating transfers to major
European sides.

There was brown ideye @op

[quote author=KingAdeOluomo1][/quote]Your analysis is half cooked. Not wrong, but not correct enough.

Undoubtedly it is true that African players are consistently undervalued in the European market and that compared to European/South American players of equal or lesser ability, the transfer fees and wages they command are deliberately undervalued.

The reason for this however, has less to do with racial discrimination (which is still a factor obviously), but much more to do with the fact that because of the state of most leagues in Africa, African players have little or no bargaining position!

If our Glo Premier League for example, was sufficiently funded and organised to the level where most of Nigeria's world cup squad came from that league, and the players in the league due to good pay packages, welfare and standard of the league were comfortable and in no hurry to move away from that league, any European club wanting to buy a Nigerian player (whether from the Glo Premier League or elsewhere) would not realistically be able to offer something as low as $400,000 as a transfer fee, nor would they be able to offer $9,000/week as wages which is what Lazio did with Onazi. If the clubs in our league pay players an average wage of say N800,000/month (roughly $5,000) without any problems of clubs owing wages, and the players perform in front of crowds of 25,000 - 30,000 regularly in TV friendly stadiums, playing high quality football (as indeed many Glo PL clubs do if you watch their matches), then a foreign club coming in for an outstanding Glo PL player earning N2.5m/month immediately knows the player is not a hungry person who will accept the discomfort of leaving home and moving abroad without getting compensated at a level that makes it worth it, and that his club will not sell their star attraction for a pittance.

In other words, if local clubs have the financial ability to pay players well and expand their operations, they will not need to sell to the first Division 2 clubside from Turkey which offers $150,000 for their best player. This also impacts on the already foreign-based Nigerian players because their market value automatically goes up. [b]Contrary to what most Nigerian football fans think, the transfer value of a footballer is not determined by his footballing ability alone. Otherwise, Samuel Eto'o should have commanded a world record transfer fee when leaving Barcelona, or Jay Jay Okocha would never have been within the budget of Bolton Wanderers. Transfer value is determined by footballing ability, marketing opportunities (how many shirts the player can sell, or how good looking he is to help with branding), branding synergy (if the player is sponsored by Nike or Adidas/if the player is a "local boy', hence a hero e.g Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona), the individual bargaining power of the player/agent (how many clubs are after him and what they are offering), the bargaining position of the player's nationality (is the player EU/Non EU passport holder, how highly rated is the player's home national league), susceptibility to injuries and so many other variables. So it happens very often that excellent players such as Nelson Paredes who played Right Back for Ecuador at the World Cup, end up in the Championship in England while average or even poor players like Carlton Cole are in the Premier League with West Ham taking home $45,000/week. Paredes comes from Ecuador whose league like Nigeria's, is lowly rated and pays little on average. Because of hunger, he had to accept an offer from the first half decent European club that wanted him, knowing that whatever transfer fee they pay for him will be used to pay the wages of his teammates which the Ecuadorian club is owing them. Even after a very good world cup outing, because the space for non-EU passport holders is limited for most top level European clubs, no big club came in for him. Instead they chose to go for players from the teams which reached the second round at least like Chile's Arturo Vidal and Colombia's Pablo Armero. This is why even the best player from that Ecuador team, Ener Valencia could only move to West Ham while James Rodriguez who is really not much better than him was snapped up by Real Madrid for $90,000,000. James Rodriguez comes from Colombia, which has a much better league than Ecuador, with a history of providing top class players. In addition, he already played for Monaco which is a club so wealthy that it does not need to sell to anyone except for a ridiculous sum of money, which is what Real Madrid had to pay to get him.[/b]

So the long and short of it is that - if we want African players to be involved in $60m, $45m, $73m transfers and take home $310,000/week, then we simply have to work on the standard of our league. The whole world knows that our players are hungry and desperate because nobody will pay them reasonably and on time if they go home. A Brazilian player who is equal in ability to Echiejile will be paid $40,000/week and will command 2 or 3 times his transfer fee because the whole world knows that Flamengo or Santos or Corinthians or Botafogo or Internacional or Bahia will gladly take the player and pay him well if he goes back to Brazil so he does not need European club money to eat. A Nigerian player will be deliberately undervalued at $6m when he is actually a $24m player and will be offered $8,000/week because they know that Kano Pillars or Gombe United or Crown FC cannot offer this player anything if he goes home and so he is desperate to remain in Europe. Who wants to pay more money when they can get a quality product for less?

And this is why I sigh when I see Nigerians celebrating that most of our U17 world champions have been taken by European clubs. They think these clubs will develop them. In actual fact, all they will do is keep them fit, play them in age grade tournaments, pay them a fraction of what their European mates earn (check how much Theo Walcott was getting paid at 15) and then if/when they win/do very well at the U20 world cup, other bigger clubs will come in and offer $7m for them to come and fill the squad numbers by mostly sitting on the bench, an offer which the initial club will gladly accept because their total investment in the players, from when they bought them from their mushroom academy in Nigeria to that point will be less than $1m! So a cool $6m guaranteed profit at least. It's like printing money.

Progress is not measured by whether our players are highly sought after by European teams.

Progress is when we have a league so good that it supplies most of our national team and so we no longer care if a European club wants to buy Nigerian players or not.

Who will buy 9ja player.u re joking