Time was when Nigeria had benches of top players jostling for shirts in the national colours. But the just-concluded football season in Europe has shown that, except in attack, where Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman lit up matchdays, Nigeria has a drought of outstanding names abroad and in departments of its first-11, CHRISTIAN OKPARA reports.

Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman are world-renowned footballers who, in recent years, have been in the conversation when the discourse is on effective attackers.

In the 2022/23 season, Osimhen was the bulwark that Italian club, Napoli leveraged to lift the Serie A title. The championship victory was significant as it came almost 30 years after the late legendary Diego Amando Maradona led the Neapolitan side to their first major triumph in Italian football.

Since that feat, Osimhen, who just ended a one-year loan stint at Turkish club, Galatasaray, has been among the most courted stars in world football. A year after Osimhen’s feat with Napoli, his compatriot, Lookman, led another Italian side, Atalanta, to their first major international laurel, the Europa League title, which he made possible with his hat-trick in the final game against Bayer Leverkusen. Like Osimhen, Lookman is one of the top stars expected to change clubs this season.

Nigeria is currently blessed with some of the best forwards in European football, with Osimhen, Cyril Dessers, Terem Moffi, Tolu Arokodare, and Uche Chrisantus being A-listers in their various European leagues.

At the end of the 2024/25 season, Osimhen won the Golden Boot Award in Turkey, thus cementing his status as the biggest import to the Turkish league this season.

The 26-year-old set and broke records in Turkey. He scored 25 goals in the Super Lig to win the Golden Boot as Galatasaray secured their 25th Turkish crown. With 36 goals in all competitions this season, Osimhen also broke Mario Jardel’s 24-year-old record for the most goals scored by a foreigner in the league.

While Osimhen was painting Turkey red with goals, Dessers and Arokodare were doing the same in Scotland and Belgium, in that order, with the latter winning the goleador prize in the Jupiler League with 21 goals and five assists in 30 league appearances to win the coveted prize.

Dessers was instrumental to the little success Glasgow Rangers had in Europe, with his 29 goals in all competitions, 18 of the 30-year-old Nigerian’s goals were scored in the Scottish League, while the others came in Europe and cup competitions from his 55 games in the past season.

Strikers have not really been Nigeria’s big problem, as over the years, the country has produced some of the most notable goal-getters in the modern game.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Nigeria’s Richard Owubokiri, who was then playing for Portugal’s Benfica and Boavista, was regularly in the run for the European Golden Boot. That tradition was maintained by goals father, Rashidi Yekini, who, despite playing for lowly Vitoria Setubal, won the Portuguese top scorer’s award.

What has changed, however, is that, unlike in the past when these top marksmen were painting Europe red with goals, Nigeria also had some crafty midfielders and rugged defenders to count on in almost all the top European leagues.

Such iconic midfielders as Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, Sunday Oliseh, Mutiu Adepoju, Wilson Oruma, Karibe Ojigwe, John Chiedozie, and Finidi George, among others, once bestrode Europe like the giants that they were.

In the defence, Nigeria also once boasted the likes of Stephen Keshi, Taribo West, Uche Okechukwu, Chidi Nwanu, Emeka Ezeugo, and Gbenga Okunowo, among others, in some of the top clubs.

One thing that all these stars had in common was that they were hewn at home and exported as almost the finished product; hence, they were able to hold their own against the best the world had to offer. Their presence in the senior national team also made the Super Eagles one of the best sides in world football.

Currently, while the Super Eagles could boast about seven top strikers in top clubs in Europe, the team can hardly pick one creative midfielder or an effective box-to-box playmaker in any of the top teams in Europe.

In the just concluded season, Fulham’s Alex Iwobi, Getafe’s Chrisantus Uche, and to some extent, Lazio’s Fisayo Dele-Basiru, were arguably the only Nigerian outstanding midfielders in Europe’s top leagues.

Iwobi was so important to Fulham’s cause that he was the most-used player in the squad, playing all 38 matches in the English Premier League. The former Arsenal boy did the same while with Everton and thus became the first Nigerian to achieve that feat back-to-back in the English Premier League.

The 29-year-old midfielder scored nine goals and provided six assists for the Cottagers – his best contribution in a single campaign. Like Iwobi, Uche was also an ever-present in Getafe’s colours in the La Liga, enjoying a breakout campaign in the Spanish top-flight.

Other players like AC Milan’s Samuel Chukwueze, Wilfred Ndidi of the relegated Leicester City, and Frank Onyeka, who moved on loan from England’s Brentford to Germany’s Ausburg, had indifferent seasons.

The defence did not fare any better because apart from Fulham’s Calvin Bassey, who had a fairly good season, and the imperial Ola Aina of Nottingham Forest, Nigeria had no backman to reckon with.

In a country that depends almost wholly on overseas-based players in building its national team, such a lack of quality defenders and midfielders ultimately translates to a poor mix in the national team setup.

Stakeholders believe that Nigeria’s lack of quality in midfielders and defenders in major European leagues is the major reason that the Super Eagles are struggling in a World Cup qualifying group comprising Lesotho, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Benin Republic, and South Africa.

They believe that Nigeria would have been better placed in Group C if the Super Eagles had players to complement the attackers’ efforts in the past qualifying matches.

A former Super Eagles striker, Victor Ikpeba, recently claimed that most of the current stars would not have made the squad during his era because the players were well-honed and in full bloom before being invited to the senior national team.

Ikpeba emphasised that the local league was more competitive and produced more national team players during his era, adding that the current crop of players in the Super Eagles are mostly average players.

The Olympic gold medallist, nicknamed ‘The Prince of Monaco’, said: “In my era, not everyone was allowed to play football. If you had to play, you needed talent, passion, and quality. Now, most parents want their kids to play football because there is money to be made in the sport. That has changed. To be selected for the Green Eagles or Super Eagles, you had to be outstanding. Quality-wise and talent-wise, I think we had more in my era than this one.”

A former Enyimba Football Club defender, Ikechukwu Ogbonna, said that the difference between the current set of Nigerian players in Europe and their predecessors is that in the past, players were thoroughly schooled from the cradle before ending up in the Super Eagles, before moving to Europe.

He said: “Most players don’t play for clubs in Nigeria anymore. They move from academies to obscure clubs in Europe, from where the lucky ones fight their way to mainstream Europe. The others that you see in the national team are players rejected by European teams, who now come to play for Nigeria to fulfill their international ambition. If they were good, they would choose the European teams rather than Nigeria. So many of the current players in the national team are players, who earlier rejected Nigeria, but came over when they could not make their preferred national teams.

“You saw what happened when Nigeria hosted Zimbabwe in a World Cup qualifier in Uyo. A single Zimbabwean player tied our entire defence to one side on his way to scoring the equaliser. That would not have happened during the era of Emeka Ezeugo, Austin Eguavoen, Uche Okafor, Chidi Nwanu, Ben Iroha, Sunday Olise, and Taribo West’s era.

“When you accept second-rated players, you don’t expect magic from them. Where you have the Bukayo Sakas, Noni Madueke, Eberechi Eze, and Michael Oliseh representing top European nations, those of them who could not reach that height fall back to Nigeria. What do you expect from them?”

He called on the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the Nigerian Premier Football League (NPFL) to find ways of developing the local league to ensure that players learn their trade properly at home before they move abroad if they so wish.

A former Super Eagles’ Midfielder, Mutiu Adepoju, who played for some top teams in Spain, including Real Madrid and Real Sociedad, does not agree that the country lacks good midfielders and defenders in the top European leagues.

Rather, he said that most of the players are not conspicuous because of the position of their clubs in their various leagues. “I think we still have top players in clubs abroad. Players like Raphael Onyedika of Club Brugge are among the best in Belgium,” he said, adding: “If we want to see top players in the major leagues, we still have to improve in the development of our players.

“We may not have players in the latter part of the UEFA Champions League or Europa League, but that does not mean that our players are not good enough.”