Yakubu Aiyegbeni powers Reading’s FA Cup run and chases elusive honours

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/mar/06/yakubu-aiyegbeni-reading-cup-run

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In the first half of this season, Yakubu Aiyegbeni was playing for Al-Rayyan in the second division of the Qatari league. It was not supposed to be like that when he joined from Guangzhou R&F in January 2014, midway through the Qatari season, but the club would suffer a dramatic last-day relegation.

Life was certainly different in Qatar, as it was in China, where Yakubu had spent the previous 18 months and one aspect of it remains seared on to his consciousness. It was hot. Boy, was it hot. “We had to train at 9.30 at night,” Yakubu says. “You’d finish training at about midnight, go home at one-ish and then go to bed at about four. You have to stay home all day because it is really, really hot and you cannot train in the morning or afternoon.”

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Yakubu came to feel that it was time to get out of the kitchen and a career that has been characterised by wanderlust, particularly in its latter years, now has a fresh port. The Nigerian striker signed a deal at Reading on 2 February until the end of the season and, rather abruptly, he is eyeing Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final at Bradford City and the fulfilment of a dream.

Yakubu never played at Wembley during the nine-and-a-half seasons he previously spent in England – with Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Everton, Leicester City and Blackburn Rovers – but victory over the League One team would get him there for the semi-final and, who knows, possibly the final too.

“I was there at Wembley for the 2009 FA Cup final with Everton [which they lost to Chelsea] but I was injured, I was out for nine months with a ruptured achilles,” he says. “It was crazy. When you’re watching from the side, it’s quite different. We have the chance now to do it and, if we could, it would be great.”

Yakubu is itching to be involved for Steve Clarke’s team, having started one Championship game since his arrival as a free agent. Initially, he lacked fitness but he and his manager now feel that he is in good condition. He has been an unused substitute three times and his one goal came in the previous round of the cup, when he came on to score the winner at Derby County.

Yakubu has played at the highest level; he first came to prominence in the Champions League at Maccabi Haifa and he appeared at the 2010 World Cup, scoring a penalty in Nigeria’s final group game against South Korea.

Clubs have paid big money for him, most notably Middlesbrough (£7.5m) and Everton (£11.25m) and he has 96 Premier League goals, which puts him just ahead of Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Dimitar Berbatov at 26th on the all-time list, and clear of Dennis Bergkamp, Fernando Torres and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Yakubu, though, wants to gild the final years of his career with rich experiences and he has stories to tell from Qatar and China. “Believe me, Qatar can host a good World Cup,” he says. “They have nice stadiums. But when it is hot, it is really hot.

“You can’t train when it’s 50C. That’s why we had to train at night. In the winter, it is less hot. We could train at four o’clock. We’d play matches at about eight o’clock and then they’d have to stop one or two times for water breaks. Would a summer World Cup have been crazy? Not crazy but it is hot. Thinking about the fans who come over to watch … it is so difficult.”

China sounds like a culture shock. Yakubu scored the winner on his debut in the derby against Marcello Lippi’s Guangzhou Evergrande but, in general, there was not the intensity he was used to from England. Crowds were sometimes as low as 5,000 and rarely higher than 20,000.

“You have to switch your mentality,” Yakubu says. “You have to scrap where you play in your head. The atmosphere is different. In Liverpool, if you lose the derby you do not want to go out, but you can still go out in China.”

Yakubu talks about the lack of attention away from the field and how it was welcome. He sometimes went unnoticed. “As a football player, you want your privacy,” he says.

Communication, though, was the challenge, and not only when he ventured out, with every destination on his phone to show to taxi drivers. “We had a Brazilian manager [Sérgio Farias], who spoke Portuguese and there were two guys who had to translate him into English and Chinese,” Yakubu says. “The manager might be supposed to speak for five minutes but you are there for double that, with the translating.

“It was also difficult to speak to some of my team-mates, because they didn’t speak English. You don’t know how to tell them to pass the ball. I would just scream at them and, when I screamed, they knew that they had to give me the ball.”

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Yakubu found it easier when Farias was replaced as the manager by Sven‑Göran Eriksson, who he had worked with at Leicester. “Sven has stayed the same person, he never changes,” Yakubu says. “He is one of the best managers I have worked with. He is really calm. He put the pressure on me in his own way. He doesn’t say: ‘You have to score.’ He’d just come over and say, with a smile: ‘It’s been a while since you scored.’”

Eriksson’s gentle persuasion contrasted with the more upfront style of Harry Redknapp, the manager who brought Yakubu to England from Haifa in January 2003, when he was in charge at Portsmouth.

“Harry makes you believe that you can kill a defender, even when you play against the big teams,” Yakubu says. “If you’re scared, like if you’re going to play against, say, Sol Campbell, Harry would say: ‘Sol Campbell? He’s shit. Don’t worry.’”

Yakubu rates his former Portsmouth team-mate Teddy Sheringham as the best striker that he has played with. “He was unbelievable, he always made you believe,” Yakubu says, although his self-belief has long come from within. “As a striker, all my life, I’ve been under pressure,” he says. “It is how you deal with it. I am always confident.”

It is remarkable to think that Yakubu is still only 32 and, frankly, not everyone believes he is. David Moyes probably did not help the situation when, as Yakubu’s manager at Everton in 2008, he described him as being “only 25, albeit a Nigerian 25”.

“It does not bother me,” Yakubu says. “Kanu has had it as well. I just laugh about it. People make a joke and that is it. If I was lying about my age, I don’t think I would be playing now. I would be retired already.”

Before he does call it a day, Yakubu wants to win something. Apart from Israeli titles in 2001 and 2002 with Haifa, plus the Championship with Portsmouth in 2003, the cupboard is bare. “I think trophies are missing from my career,” Yakubu says. “One more would be great.”