Al Rayyan, the Qatari club who embark on their Asian Champions League group phase in Abu Dhabi against Al Jazira on Tuesday, arrive gently purring with satisfaction at the business they did during the winter transfer window.
Prioritising potency and experience up front, the side invested in high salaries in exchange for established competitors. Coach Manuel Jimenez, a Spaniard, is largely content with the impact of his new recruits.
The club needed to act urgently, having slipped to the lower end of the Qatar Stars League. In came Yakubu Aiyegbeni, the powerful Nigerian striker with a globetrotter’s CV, and his compatriot, Kalu Uche, another with a varied locker of experiences and the skills to complement Yakubu’s physical presence.
The real coup, though, could turn out to be Lucho Gonzalez, the Argentina midfielder. If Gonzalez starts to command the space behind the forward line, then the new strikers will rarely want for quality service.
Lucho is a serial accumulator of titles. He gave up the opportunity of chasing a plausible seventh Portuguese league crown when he agreed to leave Porto, the club who have most-shaped his career and high reputation, in favour of a move to the Arabian Gulf.
His contract, in his second spell with the club, was due to expire in June. Porto, knocked out of the European Champions League in December, saw a potential saving on one of their higher earners.
Supporters were nonetheless unhappy to see a favourite depart, since players of his craft and intelligence are not easily replaced.
“He’s what I describe as a ‘technical leader’,” said Didier Deschamps, Gonzalez’s coach at Marseille.
Gonzalez spent two and half years in Marseille, helping Deschamps’s team to the French Ligue 1 title in 2010.
“Apart from the decisive passes and the goals he contributes, he is a great recoverer of possession,” Deschamps said.
Hence the nickname that has become his natural term of address since his teens: “Lucho”, the “battler”, an all-around modern midfielder good enough to have won 44 caps for his country.
At 33, the Lucho engine is still running efficiently and, as a sharp turn of pace has never been a particular feature of his game nor integral to his effectiveness, Rayyan should profit from his intuition. He is already off the mark with his new club, with his 90th-minute goal against Al Gharafa earning a point in his second appearance. He also set up one of the goals in last week’s 4-1 thumping of Qatar’s Al Ahli.
The standout performance in that fixture was Uche’s. The Nigerian’s experience in the Qatar league, with El Jaish, the club he joined last June and represented for six months, had probably not prepared him for the generous buffet of opportunities to enhance his goalscoring statistics that Al Ahli offered last Thursday.
Rayyan were awarded no fewer than three penalties in the fixture, and Uche converted all of them. Uche, who enjoyed his greatest success in Spain with Almeria, has always had a talent with a dead ball, as well as pace and cool finishing in open play. With he and Lucho in the side, Rayyan have two experts from set pieces around the opposition penalty area.
Joining Rayyan also reunites Uche with Yakubu, the pair having partnered up front for Nigeria, notably at the 2010 World Cup. That was a disappointing tournament for the Super Eagles, although Uche, with two, and Yakubu, with one goal, both registered on the scoresheet in South Africa.
Unfortunately for Yakubu, his World Cup is forever bound to be most remembered for a glaring miss, in a drawn match against South Korea. The chance, from close range, looked easy. Nigeria needed a win to go through. Life in his native country became hard for a period after that for the centre-forward. The gaffe still gets regularly broadcast in replays of badly fluffed misses that should have gone in.
The Yakubu career file has plenty of highlights to compensate. As a young striker barely out of his teens, Yakubu made history for Maccabi Haifa, scoring the goals that made them the first Israeli team to reach the group stage of the Uefa Champions League, in 2003.
He then joined Portsmouth, in the period before their economic crisis and decline. It was the beginning of a nine-year journey around English football.
Its peaks? A Uefa Cup run all the way to the final with Middlesbrough, in 2006. Its lows? Relegation to the Championship with Blackburn Rovers, in spite of his own hotshot scoring in the 2011/12 campaign.
He moved to China after that, which reduced his chances of an international recall, and therefore, participation in Nigeria’s 2013 Africa Cup of Nations triumph.
Some vintage showings in international club football, though, could conceivably bring the “Yak” back into contention for his country.
sports@thenational.ae
