It’s Friday, that soft landing after a long week. The pressure eases, the city exhales, and you can almost hear rest approaching.
For some of us, it’s also a day for remembering. And if you are a certain kind of Enyimba supporter, your memory drifts to one place, the good legs we used to parade.
I was in a discussion a few days ago, one of those “this league has gone off the rails” conversations that now double as therapy sessions for NPFL lovers. And I did not even reach for our golden era of the mid 2000s. I only looked at the early 2020s and fell silent.
Because if you compare that Enyimba squad to what we have today, the contrast is not just sharp. It is painful.
Goalkeeping alone was a luxury. John Noble. Ojo Olorunleke. Bassa Djeri. Any of them could start. Any of them could save us. And yes, we even had foreigners. Jean Marie Guera. Nabil Yarou. Daniel Darkwah. Emmanuel Ampiah. Farouk Mohammed. Men who crossed borders to come here. Not because they could not get a game elsewhere, but because Enyimba was still a destination. This was where you came to matter.
Midfield was not noise. It was control. Cyril Olisema, Onye obodo himself, and Austin Oladapo, passing like they built the turf with their bare hands. Add Sadiq Abubakar to that mix and you had a unit that knew how to play without panicking.
Up front, Victor Mbaoma was firing like he had something personal against goal nets.
That team almost reached the CAF Confederation Cup group stage. They were not beaten. They were robbed by a return leg in Libya that never happened. Not a football loss. A football robbery. A tweak here, a nudge there, and the next season we were league champions.
Were they our greatest team ever? No.
But they were the clearest reminder of how high this club once stood. Enyimba was the shortest route to a national team invitation. We were the toast of every top player in the country. West Africans did not think twice. They just came.
Those were the days. And yes, we hope to get them back.
But hope is a terrible business strategy.
Enyimba Enyi.
