Two biggest names in Nigerian football who didn’t play for the Super Eagles after the 2018 World Cup were Victor Moses and John Obi Mikel. The former announced his retirement from international duty while the latter struggled with an injury for some time.
One reason Victor Moses quit the Super Eagles was to concentrate on his club career. But that hasn’t worked out as planned as he has hardly been in the Chelsea squad this season.
The Eagles team captain, Obi Mikel missed a few international matches because of the travelling he had to do from China and back. Had he been playing in Europe, he would have probably played for Nigeria in a few matches.
At the end of this past week, Turkish club Fenerbahce has announced that they have officially signed Victor Moses on loan from Chelsea for the next year and a half. On Friday evening, Moses confirmed as much on his twitter account, while praising the history and success of the Turkish club so far. Since their creation in 1908, Fenerbahce have won the Turkish Super League 19 times, the Turkish Cup six times and the Turkish Super Cup nine times.
The financial details of the loan move are not available, but what we know is that Moses will wear the number 8 jersey until the end of this season.
Victor Moses (www.thenff.com)
Victor Moses joined Chelsea back in 2012. Since then, he’s been out on loan for three seasons, to Liverpool, Stoke City and West Ham before coming back to Chelsea at the start of the 2016/17 season. That season he played 39 games in all competitions scoring four goals. In the season after that, he appeared in 32 matches scoring three goals. This season, he’s appeared in six matches and started only once. Hopefully, the 28-year-old Moses can get his career back on track in Turkey.
In other big news this week, John Obi Mikel is finally coming back to play in England. He’s officially signed with the Championship side Middlesbrough until the end of the 2018/19 season. This is a great signing for Boro since they got an experienced leader in the midfield and on a free transfer.
Obi Mikel sparked the interest of several European clubs; teams like AS Roma, Wolfsburg and even Fenerbahce at one point. In the end, he chose to help Boro climb up to the Premiership. He will play with the number two on the back of his jersey.
John Obi Mikel played for Chelsea for ten years before moving to Tianjin TEDA in China in 2017 where he’s been for the last year and a half. He played in 249 games for the Blues, and 31 matches for the Chinese side. He scored a single goal for Chelsea and three for Tianjin.