The English Premier League is widely considered to be the best football league in the world. While there is no denying the quality of football across Europe’s biggest leagues, what stands the EPL apart from all the other leagues is the unbridled and perhaps unrivalled excitement that it brings to football enthusiasts all over the world.
It does not therefore come as a surprise that playing in the Premier League has often constituted a dream pinnacle in the career of most football players, in which case some of these players have found England’s premium football league a natural habitat where they flourished and dazzled in the course of their playing careers. For some others, the Premier League has been a nightmare which made them a shadow of the talent possessed to draw interest from England’s finest teams.
Like football players from other parts of the world, many African talents have made it to the top of this mountain. While some of these players have left firm imprints that will last forever, others have left regrettable legacies which echoed as a travesty to the talent they were known to possess.
Eko Hot Blog now takes a look at some top African stars who failed to hack it in the English Premier League.
(1) Daniel Amokachi: Daniel Amokachi is without a doubt one of Nigeria’s most decorated players, and this is saying a lot given the sheer wealth of football talent produced by a proper footballing nation like Nigeria over the years.
Nicknamed “The Bull”, Amokachi was discovered playing for Ranchers Bees by Nigerian national team coach Clemens Westerhof, who brought the talented player to the 1990 African Cup of Nations, and soon Amokachi moved to play for Club Brugge in Belgium. He competed in the new format of the Champions League and became the first player to score in the competition, after his goal secured a 1-0 win in the opening match in the group stage against CSKA Moscow. Performing well in Belgium and at the 1994 World Cup, Everton became interested in Amokachi and signed him for a fee of £3,000,000.
He remained at Everton until the end of the 1995-96 season, where he was transferred to Besiktas of Turkey for a fee of £1.75m. He had failed to make the impact at Goodison Park that many fans had been hoping for, and had been unable to win a regular place in the first team, as Rideout and Duncan Ferguson were firmly established as Everton’s two strikers at the time.
He scored 10 goals in 43 appearances for Everton.
(2) Rigobert Song: The narrative of Cameroun’s dominance of African football in the early to mid 2000s is never complete without their charismatic skipper at the heart of the defence. Known for his defensive skills, Song usually played as a centre back but could also operate at right back.
Following his Italian experience with Serie A side Salernitana, Rigobert Song transferred to Anfield with Liverpool in January 1999 for £2.7 million.
Early on he earned the support of Liverpool fans, who appreciated his strength, all-action style and effort. His natural position was centre half but during his time at Anfield, Song operated at right back and became a figure for Liverpool’s fans, who used to affectionately sing “We’ve only got one Song!”
Song was not able to find a spot in the starting eleven during the 2000-01 season and played just four games.
He left Anfield to sign for West Ham United on 28 November 2000, where he would also fail to impress.
(3) El Hadji Diouf: Another African nation which dominated African football in the early-mid 2000s was Senegal, a pedigree which extended to the global stage, climaxed by their defeat of World Champions, France, in the opening game of the 2002 World Cup. Central to this success was a talented forward, El Hadji Diouf.
In early June 2002 he was reportedly linked with the English club Liverpool who had also just signed his club and international compatriot Salif Diao. The news initially broke following his Man of The Match performance in the opening FIFAWorld Cup 2002 1-0 win vsFrance, who were the defending World and European Champions and one of the favourites for the 2002 tournament. Lens initially denied that the signing had been made, but it was finally confirmed on the 2nd of June with an estimated price tag of £10m.
Diouf was the striker that manager Gerard Houllier hoped would take the Premier League title from Arsenal, after Liverpool had finished in second place the previous season.
Diouf won praises for his early games for Liverpool including his first game at Anfield where he scored two goals, his first for the club, in a 3–0 win against Southampton on 24 August 2002.
After scoring one more goal, Diouf failed to score for the remainder of the 2002–03 season or at all in the 2003–04 season which saw him pick up 13 yellow and one red card which came on 7 January 2004 when he was sent-off in a 1–0 away win against Chelsea for fouling
Adrian Mutu. By then he had become unpopular due to both his attitude and his lack of goals. Jamie Carragher. later said of him “
He has one of the worst strike rates of any forward in Liverpool history. He’s the only no. 9 ever to go through a whole season without scoring, in fact he’s probably the only no. 9 of any club to do that. He was always the last one to get picked in training”.
He left for Bolton Wanderers in 2005 and went on to represent Sunderland, Blackburn Rovers and a host of lower rung English teams.
(4) Quinton Fortune: Quinton Fortune is one of the biggest names as far as South African football goes; but in spite of his talent and sheer balletic grace, Fortune’s career is marred by a hugely unsuccessful time in England. Having spent between 1991-95 at the Tottenham Hotspurs academy, Fortune ultimately moved to Spain before staging a return to England with Manchester United in 1999, where he had 7 underwhelming years.
Despite playing in three Premier League winning seasons (1999–2000, 2000–01 and 2002–03), Fortune never played the required 10 games stipulated to earn a winner’s medal. However, he was awarded a Premier League winner’s medal by special dispensation following United’s title success in 2003 during which he had appeared 9 times in the league that season. It is commonly incorrectly reported that this medal had been left at the club by a former player. After being used mostly in a squad rotation basis for his career at Manchester United, he was released by the club ahead of the 2006–07 campaign.
(5) Eric Djemba Djemba: Djemba-Djemba rose to prominence with Nantes in France, where he forged a successful partnership with Mathieu Berson. His impressive performances as a feisty and uncompromising tackler for the French club earned him a dream move to Manchester United for
£3.5 million in the summer of 2003, signed by Alex Ferguson as a possible eventual successor to the 31-year-old Roy Keane.
Arriving in England, Djemba-Djemba was unknown to many fans and pundits alike. He established his aggressive style on his debut against Arsenal in the FACommunity Shield, with a tackle on Arsenal’s Sol Campbell which Arsene Wenger called “obscene”.
In 18 months at Old Trafford, Djemba-Djemba found it difficult to maintain a period of sustained form, and he was eventually unable to establish himself as a player capable of eventually succeeding the ageing captain Roy Keane in the centre of the United midfield.
Djemba Djemba left United for Aston Villa in 2005, where he would also struggle to nail down a first team place.