Lagos

Jay Jay Okocha about his engagement in nightlife, the state of the art of African football and the everlasting anger of Oliver Kahn

You are probably one of the most popular players Africa ever had. After all these years under constant public observation: How is your afterlife?

It is fun. I planned it big for my return to Nigeria. I knew where I was going to. And that helped me a lot. But at the same time I still miss football. Sometimes I still forget that I don’t have to go to the training. If I want to eat late or drink a little bit I still have in my mind it’s not the right thing to do – because of the training the next morning. That still happens to me every now and then. But I’m enjoying my retirement because now I can create my own program. When I am tired I have some rest. That was different at the time when I was playing. You know, players don’t make their rules. They follow the rules. Now I actually make my own rules.

If I get you right, the place we are sitting here, Bar Number Ten, is part of a master plan you had in mind a long time. What else is this master plan about?

My company produces securities to doors like we have them down here at the entrance. We do gadgets. We have priority change, we do real estates, we do a lot of things, but we are still a young group, you know, trying to grow up. For me this bar is like a show place that I had in mind as a fun place after work. Just to sit down, relax, have a drink and eat out with friends before I go home. My initial plan was to have a restaurant and not a bar. But then it turned to a nightclub and I couldn’t stop it. You know how people are. You can’t stop people from having fun. At the beginning I said, okay we close at one or two o’clock at night. But to be honest: That’s when the fun really starts.

You are still quite famous in Germany, so I can imagine how it is here in Nigeria. Is it easy to live an ordinary life here in Lagos?

Well no, it’s not easy. It’s very difficult. But I believe that’s the price I have to pay. Every good thing comes with a price.

Some Nigerian football fans told me they were very surprised that you suddenly retired this summer. Was it a spontaneous idea?

You know, when people like the way you play they don’t want to accept the truth. They don’t want to see you quit because they still want to see you out there on the pitch. As for me: I planned for it. When I left England to Qatar for me that was it. It planned to go to Qatar and finish there. But then when I came back to play for Hull and the fans thought maybe I changed my mind about my retirement. Especially when we gained promotion from Championship to Premier League. But for me that was the perfect time to stop. Once I saw that I was losing a little bit I thought: maybe this is the right time to quit. I don’t want to be greedy and I hate to struggle. I always wanted to be amongst the best whatever I am doing.

Is the thrill of a nightclub comparable to the thrill of the stadium lights?

Football used to be my job. I used to eat, sleep and drink football. For me there was nothing better than working hard in the week and then on Saturday, in front of 50.000 spectators, be able to show what I was working on. I also used to love of course the crowds reaction when I was doing something good. It gives extra energy to know that people are appreciating what you are doing. But of course there is no way to compare that thrill with nightlife. This nightclub is a place where I come to have fun after work, football then was my work.

You spent many years of your career in Germany, France, England, Qatar. Why did you return to Nigeria?

At the beginning it wasn’t that clear that I was going to return. I left Nigeria at the age of 17 and my first destination was Germany. It still feels like I grew up in Germany. It’s like I went to school there because there I learned how to become a professional. That helped me throughout my whole career. But then after I had almost run the world I realized that at the end of the day there is no place like home. Even if your home is not like the best place to be. At the end of my career I realized that I have to come back. That I can’t reject my people. I can’t reject home just because it is not as comfortable as Europe or America. I said to myself: If we all keep running away who will make a change?

What do you like about Lagos?

It is a special city. It looks chaotic, it looks impossible for one to be able to live here. But once you know when to leave home and when to go home to avoid all the traffic, I don’t think there is any other place in whole world that has got the kind of opportunities that are here in Lagos. Almost anything that you touch turns into gold – if you touch it right. I call it the land of opportunities. You just need to know to get along with the chaos.

How did you get out of that big chaos to the small German city called Neunkirchen at the age of 17?

I got there by accident. I went to visit my brother’s friend and I thought that’s it. A visit, no more, But after I went to training with him, the coach asked me weather I could come back. And I went back. The rest is history.

What were your first impressions of Neunkirchen?

At the beginning it was not easy at all. I felt homesick. I didn’t have a lot of friends there. But I was lucky to find somebody who helped me a lot. This guy named Till Brix. He took me like his son and made me feel at home somehow. From there it was a lot easier.

Do you still have friends from the times you conquered the Bundesliga with Eintracht Frankfurt?

Well you know how it is. I played in five different countries and it was kind of difficult for me to keep in touch because everybody was busy. But once in a while I still talk to some people. And of course the person I am still very close with is Anthony Yeboah.

Eintracht was an amazing team in the early nineties. It brought a new spirit into the Bundesliga, the idea that art and football are not contradictious.

Exactly. For me football is an entertainment business. And sometimes I couldn’t understand why people were taking it that serious, people preparing for their game as if they were going to war. I am not saying that you don’t have to take it serious at all. But at the end of the day you still have to have in mind that this game is about winning and losing. Good days and bad days. No matter how serious you take it, you can never win everything. At the beginning I couldn’t understand that German football at all. Later on I realized that if you prepare yourself very well off the pitch than you can be able to take it on the pitch. Those were things I needed to learn. And on the other hand the audience over there suddenly learned to adore when Anthony and I sometimes could reflect our own mentality on the pitch, our own flair and the way we see it.

One of these moments, Germans will always remember, was the goal you made 1993 against Oliver Kahn. Is it for you a special moment, too?

It was and still is special to me. I can still remember what [Klaus] Toppmöller [head coach of Eintracht Frankfurt in 1993] told me after the game. I was on the bench for that game and I only came in a couple of minutes before the goal. So Toppmöller later in the evening told me, that if I had missed that goal I would have probably never played again. I told him that I didn’t plan to keep the ball that long. As I saw it on the pitch, I just didn’t have a clear opportunity to shoot. I was waiting and dribbling and almost lost the orientation. But at the end of the day I still managed to hold the ball as long as necessary to find that little space I was looking for, right between the pole and Oliver Kahn. It is still a special goal.

Did you ever talk with Oliver Kahn about it?

No, no, no. You know how he is. I always knew, if I don’t want to upset him I better don’t mention that goal in his presence. I think he is still not happy with me. But you see, after that he turned to one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

What’s the state of the art of African football. Has it improved continuously?

Not really. We’ve got to a stage where we’ve got stuck. We didn’t get over that hurdle. The biggest success that we’ve got in World Cup so far is the quarterfinal. And no team has managed to go beyond that. I have to admit, yes, we stood still somehow as a football continent. But of course individually African footballers have improved a lot. You can see that we are playing in almost all the best clubs in the world, and we are doing well there. But as nation, I don’t think that Nigerian football is now where it is supposed to be.

When the you and the Super Eagles won the Gold medal in Atlanta in 1996 it felt like a promise that within a couple of years there will be an African World Cup Champion, too. So if we are talking of your generation, are we talking of a lost generation?

I don’t think so. Because Nigeria has continued to produce talents. Our main problem is that we don’t have a longtime structure. We live as like we live only today. We have no plan that runs for the next eight or twelve years. We always think the next World Cup could be our World Cup but then in the end we never win it. That lack of a huge program affected us a lot in Nigeria.

In other countries, retired star players often become national team coaches. Like Maradona, Donadoni or Klinsmann. Any plans to join that line?

Well for now I would say: no. Because being a coach is not an easy job. I don’t have a licence and maybe because of my character that’s not a good idea, too. I am very demanding. It still might happen, you never know. But for now I don’t think I can see myself becoming a national team coach. I would rather prefer to give something else back, especially towards the youth. Because how to become a professional footballer that’s what we haven’t been told here in my times. And of course I want to transmit that you should always remember that there is life after football. Actually that is probably the most important part of a footballer’s life. But for me that would be more like a hobby because I like what I do now and I like the major challenges I am facing.

Why did the German coaches like Winnie Schäfer, Otto Pfister or Berti Vogts never get really happy in Africa?

I think they didn’t really do their homework to know where they are coming to: the environment, the people they are working with, the level of understanding of professionalism. And because they didn’t do this homework they couldn’t find a way to bring continuously the best out of their players. They way you treat African players and especially the way you deal with the football association is not the way it works in Germany. The gap is too much. And when you come here without knowing what you are going to face, you have a big problem.

What is this gap exactly about?

For me maybe their biggest problem must have been working with the federation. Because in Germany everything is well structured. Everybody knows his job. You don’t have to do the job of anybody else. You just focus on your players and think about how to get the best out of them. But here you have to do even their administrative work. You have to teach them what to do because they don’t know. In the federation they believe that guys like Schäfer or Vogts would be able to restructure the whole thing immediately. But for them it is impossible to work like this, I believe.

How important is the fact that the next World Cup is going to take place in Africa?

That’s a great thing for Africa in general. A lot of people still have strange ideas about Africa, without knowing that continent at all. They think it is all about bushes, deserts, lions and sickness. For me this World Cup is an opportunity for people to come and really see that there are some good things in Africa as well, that this is a unique continent. There are so many things people from all over the world should learn about Africa. And this gives us the opportunity to accelerate this learning. It will be a very colourful World Cup.