By Kunle Alfonso
I remember the day like it was just yesterday: Saturday, 22ndSeptember, 2012.
I was on official duty in Calabar, Cross River State’s capital city. I had just had a sumptuous lunch of pounded yam and this crazy-delicious stew; I forget the name now- but as I said, I was in Calabar, so you can comfortably agree with me that if I say it was crazy-delicious, thenindeed it was: Calabar people are a culinary gift from God.
Already half-dozing on my seat after all that, I was trying to summon the strength to get up and make my way up to my room, when two men fully decked in Nigerian jerseys and mufflers, walked past me. I then remembered that the U-17 National team, the Golden Eaglets, were playing their World Cup qualifiers return leg against Niger Republic at the U.J.Esuene Stadium that day.
I immediately approached Etido, the hotel lounge barman I had struck up friendship with, and who had boasted that there was nothing he couldn’t ‘arrange’ for me in that town.
Well, I decided to “try” him with getting me a ticket to go see the game and… well… let’s just say Etido was a man of his words, as a shifty-looking fellow appeared in about half an hour with a ticket for the game! Money exchanged hands (almost4 times the actual price, but, hey, what did you expect), and within the hour, I was seated amongst the horde at the stadium.
That was the day I first saw a then-16-year-old Wilfred Ndidi play; a player I now regard as arguably the best defensive midfielder in the world today.
How and why Wilfred was axed from going to the 2013 U-17 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates (which Nigeria won) on some bogus FIFA MRI scan result is moot: you and I know how FIFA conducted themselves subsequently and its repercussions.
Let’s get back to this wonderful footballer.
I have followed Wilfred Ndidi’s professional career from when he debuted for Genk in the Belgian Pro League in January 2015, to when he signed for then English Champions Leicester City (that still sounds strange, doesn’t it? Leicester? Champions of England?) in December 2016, and he has been simply phenomenal.
* A bit of trivia here: It may interest you to know that he scored the Goal Of The Season in the 2015/16 season in Belgium. Let me try and describe the goal to you: During the Belgian League play-off game against Club Brugge, a Brugge defender had just cleared a dangerous cross from a Genk winger out of his penalty area. Wilfred, all of 40 yards away, calmlylifted the loose ball smoothly over an opposing player before unleashing a ferocious, long-range volley into the top right corner. All in one motion. With only his right foot. Pure genius. The ball was adjudged to be travelling at over 111 km/h.*
Let me also reproduce for you here, the emotional farewell message he wrote to Genk when he left, which underscores what a wonderful guy he is off the field, and how much he is loved:
But it’s in the English Premier League that Wilfred has truly set the football world on fire.
Purchased by Leicester City for £17 million just weeks before his 20th birthday, he was brought in to replace N’GoloKante, the two-players-in-one dynamo whom the club sold to Chelsea for around £32m the summer after their incredible Premier League triumph.
Unfortunately for Ndidi, Kante was a seemingly one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable player, and the general consensus was that Wilfred was trying to step into boots that were impossible to fill. In N’GoloKante’s only season with Leicester, the club improved by more than 40 points and won the title. In his first season with Chelsea, the club improved by 40 points and won the title. He’s one of only two defence-oriented midfielders, along with Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira, to win the Premier League Player of the Season award. He also landed both the PFA Players’ Player of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year awards too.
Well, it has been a little more than three years since Wilfred Ndidi arrived in England, and he has usurped Kante’s claim as the best ball-winning midfielder in Europe, possibly in the world.
In the first five games of this season, Leicester City Manager Brendan Rodgers mainly played Hamza Choudhury, a perfectly capable ball-winning midfielder, alongside Ndidi and YouriTielemans in midfield. That structure kept them in every game, for good and for ill. However, the tactical beauty of having a relentless, ball-winning player such as Ndidi in your squad is that he allows you to shove an extra attacker onto the field without losing much (if any) defensive solidity. It’s why Pep Guardiola had been able to play the likes of David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne as de facto midfielders at the same time: it’s all thanks to Fernandinho. And in the age of three-man midfields, it’s why Leicester won the Premier League with a midfield of Kante and Danny Drinkwater, before Chelsea won the Premier League with a midfield of just Kante and NemanjaMatic.
Rodgers dropped Choudhury from the starting eleven and then withdrew James Maddison- a player who would have been a traditional No. 10 a decade ago, from the front three and into the midfield. Since the 1-0 loss to Manchester United in the middle of September, Leicester have won 12, drawn one and lost three. Their performances have kicked into a much higher gear, and at the heart of it all, Ndidi has been an absolute machine.
Truly dominant players tend to create easily digestible statistics, and Wilfred Ndidi is no different. It’s simple: He has won more tackles (53) and made more interceptions (56) than any other player in the Premier League. Add up the defensive work of his midfield partners, Tielemans and Maddison, and neither their combined tackles (43) nor their interceptions (26) come close to matching Ndidi’s mark. He’s doing the dirty work all by himself. You want someone to go and get the ball for you? Right now, there’s no one in the world better than Ndidi.
Thanks to the financial gap between them and the 14 other clubs, the Premier League’s Top Six were supposed to be unbreakable, but Wilfred Ndidi and co. have shattered that idea. With a 14-point lead over fifth-place Manchester United, they’re heavy favourites to return to the Champions League next season.Wilfred Ndidi certainly belongs there.
Whether it’s with Leicester or some other bigger, richer team that decides it wants its own one-man midfield, he should be at the top of the game for a long, long time.