Brazilian soccer legend, Ronaldinho believes former Nigerian captain and midfield maestro, Jay-Jay Okocha didn’t reside as much as the potentials of his expertise attributable to his transfer to Bolton Wanderers within the English Premier League.
Okocha joined Bolton in 2002 after spending 4 years at Paris Saint-Germain the place he made 84 appearances scoring 12 objectives.
He would go to spend one other 4 years at Bolton, racking up 124 appearances, however his former PSG teammate feels his transfer to England was a unsuitable one.
“Jay Jay Okocha, wow!! That artificial soccer to hearken to him. At coaching, we might watch him doing a freestyle, no matter he needed to do, the ball would do it. However his downside is that he was too eager to maneuver to England,” Ronaldinho mentioned.
“I didn’t like the choice, at the least in Italy or Spain, there, they assist you to play your expert soccer with out interfering together with your play. In La Liga or Serie A, he would undoubtedly get an opportunity to play for a giant crew, as a result of they love expert gamers over there. In England, you stand no probability of taking part in for a giant crew when you’re that expert. They suppose it’s not mandatory.”
Ronaldinho has by no means hidden his admiration for former Nigeria captain Austin Okocha.
Okocha had a nomadic 18-year profession throughout Germany, Turkey, France, Qatar and England, and was considered an icon at Bolton the place he featured most in his membership profession and in addition helped them transfer from simply outdoors of the relegation zone to European soccer for the primary time.
Okocha, in an interview with talkSPORT in 2021 confessed that the transfer wasn’t utterly thought out.
“I’ll say that it’s apparent that I didn’t actually do my analysis earlier than signing for Bolton,” he informed talkSPORT Breakfast.
“As a soccer particular person, soccer comes first, not the town, not the life-style, however one factor that’s clear is that the coaching floor was completely different, the angle in direction of the video games was completely different.”
Okocha performed the whole lot of his Bolton profession beneath Sam Allardyce, reaching large success on the formerly-named Reebok Stadium.