On the wrong side of thirty and outside of Europe's top five leagues, both marksmen are turning back the hands of time with splendid goalscoring feats
What’s in a number?
Well, that depends. The significance of numerology varies from one individual to the next: we’ve all at some point in our lives been asked to pick a number between 1 and 10. The reason for whichever number leaps first out of the murky pond that is the human subconscious is a pursuit for far more specialized minds.
Pop culture has given us negative mental associations with the number 13, for example. However, for the professional footballer, the digits that hold a similar connotation of impending doom are 3 and 0. Thirty is the onset of dusk, the waning of the hearth, the cue for a curtain call.
However, there exist exceptions to this natural transition; mostly goalkeepers, for whom wisdom dictates that familiarity breeds the sort of contemptuous ease with which it is necessary to achieve consistency. Dino Zoff hoisted the World Cup at the age of 40: the beginning of life, as the saying aptly goes; by turning away from one spinning sphere and embracing another—a footballer never truly lives in the material world while active.
For outfielders, the exceptions are far fewer and the rationalizations more arcane. We have all secretly thought that once the fabled AC Milan defenders of yore: Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Nesta pass on, we might glean some deep biological insight to the limits of the human body by studying them.
It would also be worthwhile to investigate just what makes Obafemi Martins and Bartholomew Ogbeche tick. While the former has found Major League Soccer conducive to the reawakening of his goalscoring touch, the latter has apparently discovered the elixir of youth in humble Leeuwarden.
Ogbeche | Has found his best form during his later years...
Indeed, at the ripe age of 30, Ogbeche is having the best scoring run of his professional career. Having promised so much in the early 2000s, his failure to deliver was not rewarded with patience at giants Paris Saint-Germain. A convoluted journey by way of Spain, France and England, has brought him to Cambuur, in their third season in the Dutch top-flight. His 50 appearances have yielded 22 goals since he moved to the club in January 2014, with the last of these coming in the 1-1 draw with AZ Alkmaar on Saturday.
With players who burn brightly in their youth, there is always the inclination to fizzle out too quickly; almost as though ability is alarmingly finite, to be rationed piecemeal and with great care.
What makes Ogbeche’s case more remarkable though is that, having appeared to wane, he has been rekindled as though by a sudden gust of oxygen, sparkling beautifully in one last salvo.
The same can be said for Martins. Highly rated at a tender age, his big-money move to Newcastle in 2006 came as a consequence of his highly effective cameo displays with Italian giants Inter Milan. His three years on Tyneside yielded 35 goals in all competitions, hardly a disappointing return. However,he had the misfortune of inordinate expectation, having been draped in the vestments of retired club legend Alan Shearer. That, coupled with the €15 million fee paid for him, and the club’s relegation in 2009, meant he had to move on.
Martins | Too much, too young...
He has now found his feet again, as well as the spring in his step (and somersaults) playing in the green of the Seattle Sounders, and the news of his goal return–14 for the season now, in 18 appearances–has been noised back home.
This abrupt eruption of form on the opposite sides of the Atlantic is all the more remarkable because longevity is not a trait often associated with Nigerian forwards.
