Growing up as a youth in Nigeria, you always want to look for idols. People to look up to. It's not as easy as just being inspired by Maradona or Batistuta or Baggio. For a West African boy, you want someone who looks like you and comes from the same part of the world as you do.
Enter Africa's first superstar and solitary Ballon D'OR winner. George Weah.
If you're not from the continent of Africa, you don't know what it meant to have the Liberian striking master play for AC Milan and be one of the deadliest players in the world. It was amazing to see. Didn't matter that he wasn't Nigerian. Weah represented the entire continent and everyone who loved football in that part of the world was rooting for him, and were inspired that he rose up to the very heights in the toughest league in around at the time.
I've spoken at length at the sad state of affairs where there are hardly any strikers to speak of. The ones that are around, either are link-up players who play with the midfield or they're Giroud. Not trying to offend my French brother, but I would bite your face off if you dared put Giroud in the same category as Weah. He does the job for Arsenal and gets a consistent amount of goals, but he is in now way cut from the same cloth as George W. (Not the president.)
To appreciate Weah's impact, you have to understand the time that he was playing in. This wasn't 2015 where the quality of the Serie A is pretty low. It's recently been on the rise, but isn't really what we knew it to be. We're talking back in the nineties when scoring thirty G's in the Serie A was near to impossible. Back in the time when you had true men as defenders, and the level of difficulty was almost off the charts.
Weah rose above that.
Before I get into lavishing praise on my African compadre, excuse me while I let out a gripe I have pertaining to how some may view Weah and other great African players:
The thing that makes my blood boil when writers and commentators talk about players of African descent is either how strong they are or their speed. It's never about their technique or skill. I'm not sure these clowns realize, but football is a skill-based sport. Especially when you are playing at the highest level, relying merely on physical attributes won't get you very far against extremely smart and proper defenders that the Serie A had in the nineties.
Weah was the embodiment of what it means to be a striker in the classic sense of the word. You could even perhaps say that Drogba was closest to him in style of play, but I'd say Weah had better technique to him. And the very fact that he was so clinical in the Serie A, puts him above Drogba, as we don't know how well the Ivorian would have done against the very best defenders the game has seen.
The crowning moment of Weah, which exemplified the kind of player he was, is this goal below. If someone told you that a player got the ball from a corner-kick, and ran the length of the pitch and scored, people would think you're joking.
Please witness true greatness, and tell me again that this G was all power and pace:
Weah also hearkens back to a time when the name of AC Milan meant something. For teenagers watching football now, they probably think Milan is an average mid-table team, that had a little success during Ibra's short stint. They don't know of Kaka, Van Basten, Inzaghi. Sadly, they wouldn't have known of the greatness that was George Weah. The very reason why I have a soft spot for Milan and it saddens me when I see the state they're in, is because of Weah. He was the one that made me love Milan and root for them in the Serie A. From that point on, I always followed and paid attention to how Milan did in the Serie A, all the way to the dark pit they find themselves in. It's sickening how average they are now compared to the team that Weah was in.
Currently they have Bacca who I wouldn't put in the same sentence as Weah, but he's really been one of the very few bright sparks for the team. But you only have to wonder, if you had the '95 Weah in this current Milan team, even with all the garbage that's stinking it up, he'd probably find a way to make them win more games than they have done. It wouldn't be easy, but I would have liked to see how he would have fared.
George Weah, a footballing striking legend, and one of the best players in his position I've ever seen. If only we can go back to an age when he had such destructive and devastating strikers such as George. For now, it's for us to reminisce and praise his accomplishments on the football pitch.
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HH
