Player Focus: Okaka Showing Nasty Side as he Begins to Fulfil Potential

“Now I think about it, Cassano could be a weatherman,” Stefano Okaka laughed. The Sampdoria striker had been reflecting on the low point of his career. It had come at Parma. Okaka had signed for them a couple of years ago, persuaded by general manager Pietro Leonardi and head coach Roberto Donadoni. 

Roma had been loaning him out to one club after another first to Modena and Brescia then Fulham and Bari. Okaka had come to terms with the fact he wasn’t ever going to get the chance to compete for a regular starting place there. He was given the impression it would be different at Parma. Alas it was a false one. 

“They wanted me and then inexplicably sent me to Spezia,” Okaka told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “I then came back and they made me train by myself without ever explaining anything to me.”  It was in these days - “the adjective I’d use is ‘dark’,” he says - that Cassano tried to lift his spirits. “When the rain falls from the sky, it’ll rain hard,” he told Okaka. 

Since joining Samp in the spring and working under Sinisa Mihajlovic it hasn’t necessarily been pouring with goals. Monday night’s in Verona was only his third of the season. Still the storm clouds that had gathered over him have parted. The sun is out and Okaka is finally shining too. “He threw away six or seven years,” Mihajlovic told Thank Gol It’s Friday back in September. “Now he has to make up for lost time. He can become one of the best strikers in Italy.” 

The phrase ‘thrown away’ is a bit much. It might lead you to labour under the misapprehension that Okaka was a wild child who went off the rails and is only now coming to his senses. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Born in Castiglione del Lago, his parents Austin and Doris were great role models. 

They moved to Italy when Doris was expecting his older brother Carlo. Immigrants from Nigeria, Okaka says they had to work even harder because of it and once him and his sister Stefania came along their efforts trebled. “My mum worked three jobs in one day. She was a janitor, waited tables in a restaurant and cleaned swimming pools and schools until late at night,” Okaka revealed. “My sister and I were so proud we helped out where we could.” Okaka mopped floors to bring in extra money. By 16, however, he was making his Serie A debut for Roma. Next week marks its ninth anniversary. 

Missing Vincenzo Montella and Cassano, it was the game that coach Luciano Spalletti first experimented with Francesco Totti as a false 9. Okaka came on for Rodrigo Taddei. As fate would have it, it was against Samp at Marassi. He’d already scored in the Coppa Italia and would find the net for the first time in Serie A at the beginning of the following season in a 3-1 win away to Siena.

Loved by his teammates, they all wanted him to do well, in particular his friend Daniele De Rossi. Whenever I think of Okaka my mind inevitably turns to another goal he put past Siena, a delightfully executed back-heel at the Olimpico in 2010. He leaped the advertising boards and, pursued by De Rossi who’d laid on the assist, dashed under the Curva Sud, climbing the yellow gate. JJ, as he was nicknamed by Roma commentator Carlo Zampa his reason being that Okaka sounds near enough like Okocha, was to fly to London the next day to start his loan with Fulham and knew it would be his last appearance at the Olimpico for a while. The celebration was a wonderful moment. 

Precocious, Okaka was labeled a baby fenomeno by the media. Expectations were great but he never got the continuity to meet them. Coaches didn’t have the faith or the patience to develop a talent. They weren’t honest with him. He waited too long for regular opportunities at Roma. Moving to Parma was a mistake. This is what Mihajlovic meant when he said Okaka had wasted precious time. “He understood who I am and made me understand that there are sincere people in football,” Okaka explained.

The trust they have fostered and Okaka’s awareness that Mihajlovic believes in him has gone a long way. Still only 25, he isn’t a late late bloomer but it’s about time he began to realise his potential. The player says that if he is finally doing that today then 50% of the credit is owed to Mihajlovic. “Like hell it is,” the Samp coach responded when it was put to him like that. “It’s all down to you.” 

A gentle giant - “my only weakness is I’m too nice” - Okaka has been encouraged by Mihajlovic to show more of his mean side. “I am Dr Jekyll and Mr Okaka,” he joked, “My mum has been saying it since I was a child. ‘Stefano, you change on the pitch’. It’s true. I become the exact opposite. Off it, I’m a bonaccione - a good natured easy-going guy. On it, I’m a bestia - a beast who will look no one in the face. There isn’t an opponent who is more an opponent than the others: perhaps Thuram, the most intelligent, but when I am on the pitch, they’re all the same. For 90 minutes I hate them. I study them first on video and then I hate them. I don’t argue with them because I’m not that kind of player but my eyes say only one thing: ‘I have to beat you, and that’s it’.”

Centre-backs know they’re in for a battle when they come up against Okaka. He fights for every ball. As the most fouled striker in Serie A, suffering 3.8 per game, Okaka also makes the most fouls of every player in the league, getting 4.0 called against him per game (56 in total, some 15 more than any other player). There’s a generosity and selflessness to his play that coaches adore. He holds up the ball for his teammates and allows the team to come forward. Among strikers this season only Paulo Dybala (804), Cassano (745) and Carlos Tévez (735) have had more touches (601). His total passes (21.2 per game) and success percentage (75.8%) are also quite high for a classic No.9. 

Okaka’s game is all about putting side before self and that’s the reason why Mihajlovic isn’t his only admirer. He has several and Italy coach Antonio Conte is one. Upon handing Okaka his senior debut in the friendly with Albania at Marassi last month, the CT was almost immediately repaid as the only goal of the game arrived from the Samp forward’s head. Nigeria must have been disappointed. They had contacted Okaka in May and again 20 days before his Italy selection. “I said ‘no’ because it didn’t feel natural like it did when Conte then called me up for Italy.” Castiglione del Lago is home to him. Italy is his country though he is curious to visit Lagos and see where his family once lived. “I am like a tree that doesn’t know its roots,” Okaka said. 

Also interested in his services are Inter and Milan. “Derby Okaka,” announced the front page of La Gazzetta last week. He’s got both thinking. For instance, if Inter look to cash in on Icardi in order give Roberto Mancini a transfer kitty and Milan are serious about offering Pazzini in exchange then maybe something will happen. The likes of Bayer Leverkusen and Everton have also been mentioned as suitors.

Valued at €15m, Samp are in talks with Okaka’s agent about a contract extension until 2018. Of the club’s strikers right now Manolo Gabbiadini looks the more likely to leave. He’s Napoli bound. Both scored in Samp’s first win away to Verona in 45 years on Monday, a result that lifted the club to fourth. It would be a shame to lose both. Okaka put out a statement to reassure the fans that he will continue to give 1000% and that he’s proud of what Samp are achieving. His feet remain on the ground - Okaka drives a Smart, not a Ferrari - and his head isn’t elsewhere.

Grateful of everything the club and Mihajlovic have done for him, why move? The heavens have finally opened. After a long drought, the rain is here. Cassano knew Okaka would come good. Just blame it on the weatherman.

How highly do you rate Okaka? Do you think he could make it at one of Europe's bigger sides? Let us know in the comments below