Mikel John Obi: Man Under a Cloud or Nigeria's "Pure Gold?"

When you cover football for a living, you watch something like 100 games live over the course of the year. A lot of them slip by. You write the report, take the train home and then forget about it, moving on to the next game. But sometimes you see something remarkable, something that you know instantly will remain lodged in the memory, something you know you’ll be recalling for years to come.

I remember clearly the first time I saw Mikel John Obi. The spat between Chelsea and Manchester United to secure his signature had offered forewarning of his quality, but his substitute appearance for Nigeria against Zimbabwe in a Cup of Nations group stage match in Port Said in 2006—in the stadium that, four years later, would be the scene of the massacre that cost the lives of at least 70 Al-Ahly fans—was sensational.

Nigeria had been sluggish, struggling to break down a resolute Zimbabwe when, nine minutes into the second half, an 18-year-old Mikel came off the bench for the midfielder Wilson Oruma, taking up a position behind the two strikers. Three minutes later, he dropped a corner onto the head of Christian Obodo: 1-0. Four minutes after that, cutting in from the left, he threw defender and goalkeeper with a feint to shoot, then slipped a casual right-foot finish just inside the post from 20 yards: 2-0. He smiled and raised an arm in cool acceptance of what he had just done, a player at ease with his talent.

Against Tunisia in the quarter final he was even more impressive, playing from the start and showing great composure and vision to lay on chance after chance. The former Nigeria great Jay-Jay Okocha hailed him as the best 18-year-old he had ever seen, calling him “a natural talent of the type that rarely emerges now”.

The most remarkable thing was that the previous year he had played only six times for his club, the Norwegian side Lyn, because of the dispute between Chelsea and United. He should have been rusty, but he was, as Jose Mourinho put it, “pure gold”. Daniel Amokachi, the former Everton striker who was Nigeria’s assistant coach at the time, could barely contain his excitement. “He’s very confident and comfortable on the ball,” he said. “He’s unique. He’s his own style of footballer. He can play as the man in the hole, you can use him as a defensive midfielder and he can work easily on the left or the right.

But for all his talent, things had never gone smoothly for John Michael Nchekwube Obi, as he was originally called. He was born in Jos in northern Nigeria, the son of a civil servant who had been a footballer of some ability himself. An older brother had a career as a goalkeeper in the Nigerian first division. John was clearly something special, though, and at the age of 15 he made his debut for Plateau United in the Nigerian top-flight. By 2002 he was in the Nigeria Under-17 squad. The following year he impressed at the Meridien Cup, a youth tournament for European and African national sides, and was approached by scouts from Manchester United.

Chelsea saw him at the World Youth Cup in Finland that autumn—where a bureaucratic error saw his name appear as “Mikel”; he liked it so much, he adopted the slightly adapted version—and asked him and three others for a trial. The other three went, but Mikel refused, explaining that his heart was already set on Manchester United, whom he fully expected to follow up their earlier interest. According to John Shittu, Mikel’s then-advisor, they did not, at which Mikel became increasingly frustrated and disillusioned, especially as he heard from his Under-17 team-mate Emmanuel Sarki what a good time he was having at Chelsea (he never played for the first team and is now with Wisla Krakow in Poland). Mikel, seeking to broaden his football education, moved on to Ajax Cape Town in South Africa. There he was funded by Shittu—or at least, that’s Shittu’s story; others say it was Chelsea who were paying.

Mikel moved on to Europe, and the Norwegian club Lyn. Two months after his 18th birthday, sick of waiting for United, he sought a move to Chelsea. And that is where the legal problems set in. A player cannot sign a professional contract until he is 18; until he does that, he is effectively a free agent. Mikel and Shittu claimed he never signed professional terms at Lyn. Lyn had a contract, but Shittu insisted it was a forgery. As Shittu alleged racism and European exploitation of Africans—and at one point claimed his client had been kidnapped—Sir Alex Ferguson suggested that Mikel himself, if he were removed from his advisors, would still have preferred to join United.

After the Cup of Nations, Mikel returned to Lyn, still banned from playing club football until the dispute was resolved. He stayed until the following June, when Chelsea reached an agreement with Lyn and United. So he arrived at Stamford Bridge under great pressure and having gone almost a year without playing a league match. He was sent off on his first Premier League start, and didn’t complete a league match until the following April.

From the start Jose Mourinho played him at the back of midfield, but Mikel has never looked entirely comfortable in the role. In his first two seasons, he collected four red cards, suggesting a wildness, an inability to read the game that led him to rash challenges. He has cut that out—though every now and again for Chelsea, as in the home leg of the Champions League quarter final against PSG, he shows flashes of clash—he is a diminished figure: he started only nine league games this season.

Seven years ago, Mikel looked like a great in the making and, despite all the fuss that surrounded him, there was a casual acceptance of his talent that made it look as though he were enjoying himself. Perhaps, given the wrangling in which he was a pawn, he was simply glad to get on the pitch. Now he looks a man under a cloud: at some point in the last seven years the fun has gone out of Mikel, and he is a poorer player for it.

He still excels at national level, though, and was a key part of Nigeria’s victory in the Cup of Nations last year, after being exiled for a time because he apparently showed insufficient commitment. The return seemed to have whet his appetite. In that sense, he is the model of a certain type of modern player—a hero for his nation, but only a moderate player for a club that’s probably slightly too good for him. It’s little surprise that, yet again, he’s been strongly linked with a move out of Chelsea this summer, with Internazionale the most likely destination.

Before that, though, there is the World Cup; if Nigeria are to do well, Mikel will be a central figure.