"If you can make it through in Nigeria, you can make it through anywhere else. It might sound cliche but it's fact."


Like most local kids in the sleepy, coal-mining city of Enugu, for Augustine Azuka Muhammad Yavuz Okocha - or just Jay-Jay as he was nicknamed by his older brother - there was only one goal.

"Enugu Rangers was almost the dream of every young player growing up in the Eastern part of Nigeria," says Udoh.

"They play in all white, Real Madrid colours, very emblematic of the region, the culture, everything else."

So when a teenage Okocha joined the club in early 1990, in most people's eyes he had already made it.

"Just thinking about a kid growing up, kicking a ball around and ending up at Enugu Rangers - that was almost the high point of where you wanted to be as a footballer," says Udoh.

But that year would also see a breakthrough for African football on the global stage.

Neighbouring Cameroon defeated reigning world champions Argentina in the opening game of Italia 90 before going on to reach the quarter-finals, losing out 3-2 to England in a thrilling encounter.

It was the furthest any African team had got in a World Cup previously.



Following the finals, an inspired Okocha travelled to Germany - eager to see how football was run in a country that had just become world champions.

It would prove to be a life-changing trip.

"He had a friend who was playing for Borussia Neunkirchen in the third division over in Germany, and he just went there on his summer holidays to visit him and it was just a classic schoolboy's dream," says Ed Aarons, Guardian football journalist and author of the book Made in Africa: The History of African Players in English Football.

"He went to a training session, dazzled all the coaches and was picked up."

English is the official language in Nigeria, but Okocha knew Germany may be his only gateway to the top.

"The best chance for any African footballer, whether you were from a French speaking or English-speaking country was to go to mainland Europe, because the English league was a closed shop - even for people outside of Britain until the 90s really," says Aarons.

Moving from the heat of West Africa to West Germany would be a culture shock for anyone, let alone a teenager.

"When you think about how Nigeria was back then and how the whole lack of communication was back in those days, as an African kid going to Europe - the first thing is always the cold," says Udoh. "That cold shocks you into reality.

"The one thing we always tell ourselves in Nigeria is that Nigeria is a challenge on its own. So if you can make it through in Nigeria, you can make it through anywhere else. It might sound cliche but it's fact.

"When you have to go through all the things you have to go through here - lack of electricity, terrible roads, sometimes you have to travel long distances to get fresh water - when you get from there to a first world country where everything works, you have access to water in your bedroom, you can just drive to training, while there's that difficulty in adapting to the weather - the new ease of life just makes it a whole world of difference.

"That adaptation isn't as hard as it would be if you were coming from Europe to Africa."