Feint, twist, shimmy, shake: the genius of Jay-Jay Okocha

Sarah Winterburn

The African Cup of Nations is a tournament of vibrancy, colour and rhythm. From the expressive fans to the vivacious kits and Taribo West’s neon braids, effervescent is the default. Each country treasures a visceral connection with its culture, from the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire to the Pharaohs of Egypt. But one of the tournament’s best ever players was different. The small Nigerian with shirts two sizes too big and socks rolled down his shins presented as the complete antithesis to how he played the game. He was splendour and magnificence condensed into the slightest of frames. Rhythmic, reliable beauty. Jay-Jay Okocha.

Teams frantically scraping together ringers for five-a-side is as much a fact of life as the rising of the sun; it has always been there and always will. You know Gavin from accounts can’t kick a ball to save his life, but he’s brought his astros and at least he can run about. Probably buy the overpriced beers in the bar after, in fairness. He’ll fill the shirt, nothing more, as most ringers do.

Except, of course, if that ringer is Jay-Jay Okocha. Not many turn up to training with their mate in tow looking for a game, and their mate happens to be (a very young, inexperienced version of) one of the best African players of all time. That’s exactly what happened to Binebi Numa, Okocha’s compatriot, whilst playing for Borussia Neunkirchen in the German third division in 1990. Okocha came to visit his friend to watch football in Germany – the then-current world champions – and ended up following Numa along to training. He asked if he could join in, presumably spent two hours making very competent footballers look utterly ridiculous, and was offered a contract the following day.

Fast-forward to December 1991 and Okocha’s burgeoning talent has led him to sign for Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga. Consider the chasmic gap in quality between Enugu Rangers, his hometown professional side where he played 18 months previously, and the Bundesliga. Okocha saved his best performances for some of the biggest stages, including the mental and physical dismantling of the entire 1993 Bayern Munich defence. Not content to merely let the game pass him by whilst in the presence of all-time greats like Lothar Matthäus and Oliver Kahn, Okocha made his mark in the most unbelievable fashion.

Goalkeeping leviathan Oliver Kahn stalks the slender Nigerian as he picks the ball up inside the penalty area. Twisting and turning, Okocha continually looks to send Kahn, the rest of the defence and the whole stadium writhing to the floor — keeper and attacker become locked in a delicate, almost balletic dance. Jay-Jay dangles the ball out in front of him like it’s tied on a fishing line, immediately whipping it away at the first sign of a nibble. One touch to the left, chop back to the right. Two touches, fake a shot and back to the right; Kahn’s gasping at nothing more than wisps of smoke. Four touches, back to the penalty area, avoid a sliding challenge, head up. Shifts back to his right, then his left for good measure, and fires the ball into the bottom corner beyond a presumably furious Kahn.

The sheer ludicrousness of this goal does well to encapsulate the otherworldly genius of Okocha. Short of being tied on the end of a functioning shoelace, nobody could keep the ball under their bewitching spell in such tight spaces. This is what Jay-Jay did. Through no ill intentions or need to embarrass defenders, he made them question whether their career path might grind to a startling halt right here – right when they sized up across the slender boy from Enugu.

Step-overs, chops, flicks, rabonas, you name it: if it was a joyous callback to playing football on those dusty streets with his mates, then Jay-Jay would do it. You sensed he never thought his way through a game, instead choosing to feel. He could even change what the defenders felt; one fastidious shimmy might be designed to bait an angry charge, from which he’d release his teammates. Or a sudden surge with the ball sent shockwaves of fear over the one, two or seven defenders who dared try to tackle him.

It wasn’t just in open play where he was deadly – in a two-year stint a Fenerbahçe he scored a ridiculous number of goals directly from free-kicks. A ridiculous number, from ridiculous angles via ridiculous strikes. And everyone remembers the howitzer he stuck in against Aston Villa whilst at Bolton. Arriving at the dead ball straight on from out on the right-hand corner of the penalty area, he sent a thunderous shot from the outside of his right boot into the goal before you could say the second ‘Jay’. A truly ballistic, beautiful, bonkers effort that spoke to the genius and ingenuity of the man.

Despite the dead ball speciality, his penchant for the cheeky and the flamboyant – without ever really being a cheeky or flamboyant individual – never diminished. Whilst at PSG at the turn of the century, he even mentored a young and similarly-gifted trickster: Ronaldinho. One can only imagine the state of the younger, less experienced PSG defenders in whatever training drill they got stuck alongside those two.

And some of his most glorious individual performances came on his country’s biggest stages. In the 1994 AFCON semi-final between Nigeria and the reigning champions of Ivory Coast, Okocha was unplayable. Like a firecracker left to bake, spark and fizzle in the midday Equatorial sun. Every time he receives the ball, there is a beautiful balance between doing the simple things well and the utterly ridiculous things simply. Every controlled pass to release a teammate comes after wriggling away from snarling defenders determined to bully him out of the contest. His head is forever searching, scanning, plotting. Whilst he rips through every Cruyff turn and elástico imaginable, his innate feel for the game remains completely unflustered.

AFCON has truly seen the best of Jay-Jay; after withdrawing from the 1996 tournament under pressure from then-dictator Sani Abacha, they were banned from the 1998 edition. Returning in 2000, they reached the final in their home stadium against Cameroon. And, 2-1 down, Okocha summoned up yet more wizardry to give his side a fighting chance. After chesting down a clearance and taking a meagre, half-arsed look towards goal, he fired off an absolute thunderbolt past Alioum Boukar, crashing in off the crossbar and sending the Lagos fans delirious. It ultimately was not their day – Okocha scored his eventual penalty, but they lost in the shootout. This began a 13-year despairing wait for another title, finishing third in four of the subsequent six tournaments. Okocha had given his all, like the rest of this famed Super Eagles era, but was given only one title in return.

But this comparative scarcity of AFCON silverware cannot diminish the sheer beauty and untempered artistry with which Okocha played the game. The rhythm of AFCON flowed down the shirt engulfing his body, down the socks clinging to his shins and into those jet black boots. No wonder they named him twice.

Charlie Morgan

F365 Features