Former Super Eagles Captain Austin Jay Jay Okocha need no introduction as far as football is concerned. He recently appeared on Mikel Obi’s Obi One Podcast where shared some of his interesting career stories in one of the most interesting episodes of the podcast so far. Towards the end of the interview, Mikel asked Okocha who he thinks is a better footballer between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Okocha went for Messi saying that the latter was born to play football and could get sick if he doesn’t play football. He however acknowledged that Ronaldo is a special player and a prolific goal scorer who is capable of scoring one million goals. Okocha said that some players are terrific goal scorers and mentioned Erling Haaland as one of them.

Okocha’s personal view of choosing Messi drew the irk of Ronaldo’s fans especially those from Nigeria. They desended on Okocha on social media raining all manner of abuses on him and asking what he achieved in his football career to be “disrespecting” Cristiano Ronaldo. Most of these fans did not see a prime Okocha playing football. Indeed Okocha has some descend records as a footballer and we are going to discuss them here.

Okocha first played for Nigeria in January/February 1993 during the African Youth Championship in Mauritius. Although the Flying Eagles failed to qualify for the U-21 World Cup having not progressed to the final of that Mauritius tourney, Okocha left no one in doubt about his footballing skills. Most commentators pronounced him as a player for the future and indeed a Super Eagles material.

I’ll admit it: I underestimated the Indomitable Lionesses.

I didn’t pay much attention to Cameroon’s games at the ongoing WAFCON. After all, they did not originally qualify for the tournament but were drafted into the competition after CAF increased the number of participating teams.

Then Cameroon topped their group.

Still, I waved it off. I thought they had simply benefited from a relatively weak group, especially when compared to Nigeria’s group.

Then came the quarterfinal against Nigeria.

The Super Falcons were not at their best, but I still didn’t believe Cameroon could stop them.