Former Super Eagles striker, Jonathan Akpoborie, has said lack of proper development is the major reason Nigerian players don’t succeed in the German Bundesliga lately.

Akpoborie played his entire senior football career in Germany for 12 years, featuring for clubs like Hansa Rostock, VfB Stuttgart and VfL Wolfsburg, scoring 158 goals in 370 appearances across all competitions.

In recent years, Nigerians have struggled in the Bundesliga with Victor Osimhen, who took the French Ligue 1 by storm with Lille in the 2019/20 season, failing to deliver on his earlier career promise when he joined Wolfsburg in 2017.

Taiwo Awoniyi has also struggled at German clubs Mainz and Frankfurt.

During our time, we were given plenty of time to develop. Austin Okocha played for Neunkirchen before landing in Frankfurt. I played for several second division clubs before getting the nod to the first division,

Akpoborie told our correspondent on Twitter.

The space from the first and second division to the Nigerian league has grown too large. If only they could allow some Nigerian players feature in the third division as a springboard. But they don’t allow that again. We played in the second and third divisions and that prepared us.

Akpoborie also refuted allegations that some of the Bundesliga coaches intentionally leave Nigerian or African players on the bench.

There is nothing like racism in German clubs. I, Tony Yeboah, and Souleyman Sane were the only three black players in the German professional league before Okocha came, and we were all doing well.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.