By Daily Sports on October 30, 2018

He can be described as a man of style and substance both in the field of business and in football. Obinna Emelogu emerged firmly into the consciousness of the football fraternity in Nigeria when he negotiated the deal that saw then JUTH FC of Jos player Kenneth Omeruo move to Chelsea after the player had impressed for the Nigeria Under-17 Golden Eaglets in the cadet World Cup hosted in Nigeria in 2009.

Emelogu’s sense of style straddles football players management. He’s sat with behemoth clubs like Chelsea to do business mutually beneficial to both parties in the area of players transfer and giving hope and belief to talented young players worldwide searching to reach their goals of professional football. 

There’s a caveat though; the players he works with have to be of a particular kind of high quality. 

“I look out for what a player does with and without the ball. What you do without the ball is equally as important as what you do with it. A player who doesn’t know how to position himself when he doesn’t have the ball can cost his team a game. So these are the kind of things I consider in opting for a player,” Emelogu told me some years ago.

Style of play; this is what the middle-aged intermediary is particular about. On a 

When we first met in Lagos in 2013 I was beguiled by his keen observation of players of an academy during the team’s training session. He was seated in his car almost discreetly while the session was on and as we chatted after the training period, it was clearer to me that this “football agent” was not an average run-of-the-mill players intermediary. He spoke with such calm fluency on many football-related issues including the psychology of football, the dearth of sports facilities in Nigeria and the lack of grassroots coaches with updated knowledge of the ever changing face of football technology.

“We don’t have many coaches who update themselves with the modern techniques of football,” Emelogu noted. “They just remain with whatever old knowledge they have. There’s football technology now. As other technologies (like cars) keep growing, football technology keeps growing as well. Many grassroots coaches can’t meet up with the speed at which the game is growing.”

Emelogu rarely misses, in the sense that players he presents to foreign clubs are usually appreciated and snapped up by the clubs.

Just recently Nigeria’s Flying Eagles invitee Hamdi Akujobi (who holds a Dutch passport and therefore still eligible to represent the European country) was facilitated by Emelogu’s sports management company Paradise Sports to sign for Dutch first division side Herenveen. 

As the midfielder's intermediary, Emelogu brought his years of experience negotiating favorable contracts on behalf of players to bear and today midfielder Akujobi is Super motivated to do well for Herenveen and Nigeria.

Flying Eagles coach Paul Aigbogun was full of praise for Akujobi recently.

“He’s a young player who can play various positions upfront and his tactical discipline means that he will have a great and rewarding career in Europe,” Aigbogun said. 

On how he hunts for fresh football talents with a view to managing them, Emelogu revealed: “When I go to a new training ground, I try to stay anonymous, because I don’t want them to be under pressure. This way, I can see their real quality.”

Another player in the stable of Paradise Sports is Bruno Chibuzor Ibeh, a solid defensive midfielder who is currently in the books of Israeli premier league side Beiter Jerusalem. 

One common feature of players Emelogu works with is their height. Ibeh, for example, is imposing at 6'2.

He tells me he’s on the lookout for more tall players, as there are currently quite a number of opportunities he can offer such players viz a viz playing for good European clubs.

“I focus on young, fast, tall and well-built strikers,” Emelogu says.

However of a player is exceptionally good and plays in other positions, then exceptions can be made if he’s not imposingly tall, Emelogu tells me.

Today he lives in Houston, Texas where he and his young and loving family have called home for the past couple of years. I wondered if he hadn’t lost touch with aggressive scouting of players in Nigeria but he responded by informing that he's got a number of assistants who keep an eye on fine emerging talents from Nigeria and keep him informed once there's an interesting discovery.

Emelogu likes to watch videos of young players and highly recommends that club coaches in the grassroots video often their players and make clips available.

“Even if it’s a training session, when I can identify a good and marketable player, from watching video clips of the player. It takes just a few minutes of seeing the moves and the touches of the player to know his physical, technical and tactical qualities.”

Emelogu is a certified Administrator from the University of Lagos whose star in the world of players’ management continues to ascend.

•Photo shows licensed player’s intermediary Emelogu luxuriating in the US.

Source Daily Sports

Posted October 30, 2018

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