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 of 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 was 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 leading 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’. Talk about Mikel in public 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 player’s total commitment to club for them to become regulars. One thing was very apparent though, Mikel was a great talent and everyone that saw him play as a kid knew that. What was not agreed even amongst football coaches was what position on the field to use him. 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 have 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 despite the fact that the continent has been finding it difficult to bring up new greats to take over from Eto, Essien and Drogba that have dominated the awards list more than any others this past decade. so bad was the situation that to break the monotony of those names CAF had to cleverly give two of the last three awards to Kanoute and Adebayor, players who were not convincingly deserving of them. But for that move Eto alone could very easily have won the award an embarrassing 4 or 5 times! This year, Ghana’s Amoa Gyang has come in to ‘rescue’ the situation. I believe that this weekend he will be crowned king of African football even though the football the young man has played this past year, good enough to have made Ghana the most improved national team in Africa, but surely still way behind the standard displayed by several of those that had 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 playing a Gyang would have stood no chance in hell of even a nomination! But here we are. Even as starved as the continent is of exceptionally brilliant footballers, a Mikel Obi is by-passed! Thats my grouse. There is something not quite okay about the appreciation of the qualities of Mikel Obi. And this goes even beyond Nigeria.

Mikel is not your typical ‘Wow’ player! Reactions to his performance has always been economical. It is for that same reason that Samson Siasia dropped him from his Olympic team and the heavens did not fall. How can a coach leave out his best player in a major championship and no one raises questions or raises hell? Of course, I believe that Mikel, with his talent, would have made the difference in Siasia’s Olympic team. But we would never know now 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 significantly 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 Europe. He was 15 years old at the time I met him and a student of Saint Murumba College, Jos, my Alma Mater. He had come with the school’s Under-16 team to take part in that year’s (2001) Nike International Under-16 football tournament in Lagos that I was organising on behalf of Ugomba Noel Okorougo. The representatives from Plateau were the most impressive team and John, tall, skinny, gangling, 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 lineup. 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 team mates whenever he plays. Most of the time Mikel plays within a narrow vision limiting his options to his immediate vicinity – the players next to him – searching for the quick, simple and safe interchange of passes (one-twos). It is only occasionally that he extends his vision to the field ahead. When he does and sends those telegraphic passes upfront to attackers lurking around tight defenders, defences are prised apart like knife cutting through butter! One would wish that he did that more often to shut up all those that say that since Sunday Oliseh retired from the game Nigeria is yet to find a worthy replacement. If Mikel is to ever make his mark as a world-class defensive midfield player, he has to play with the confidence, the skills, the strength and the vision of Sunday Oliseh. By the way, Oliseh should establish a school for the instruction of footballers around the world on the art of defensive midfield play! He is that good.

John Mikel Obi is a great player that has not applied the best of himself enough to make the world appreciate his true worth. Even I have had to seat back, close my eyes and take a deeper look at this player and his potentials, and  wondered why a player with such prodigious skills should be missing every year from the list of nominees of Africa’s best! Is this not the same player that plays regularly for one of the best teams in the English Premiership? Is this not the same player that broke into the Chelsea FC team that was parading some of the best players in the world, even as a teenager?  Is this not the player whose confidence on the ball and ability to shield it is incomparable to any other in the world today? Is this not the man with some of the best passes that remind one of the also immaculate and graceful Franz Berkenbuar at this best? Is this not the same Mikel Obi that played against Ghana in that memorable semi-final match in 2008 in Accra and made midfield play such a delightful spectacle to watch? I remember that match and can recall with relish the masterful, confident, professional, poetic display put up by Mikel at his very best!  Is this not the same player that I believe can play for any team in the world including the one that has made passing an art form – Barcelona FC? Thats the team he belongs to at this point in his career. Yes, I am referring to Nigeria’s own Mikel Obi and I am saying that he is without question an under-rated football great! Mikel Obi is a great player. Doing a little bit more, playing more directly forward instead of sideways and backwards, taking more responsibility and using his passing skills to deadlier effect, converting his passing skills to use for set pieces around the box, playing with the passion of one who wants to win very badly, leading the Super Eagles under Samson Siasia as its captain, and moving to Barcelona FC, I see Mikel becoming, in the nearest future, not just Africa’s next Footballer of the Year, but acknowledged by all in the continent as the genius that I believe he is!