What a surprise that was yesterday watching Cameroon versus Brazil in the World Cup. The game was not as exciting as the Serbia-Switzerland match, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. But the shock moment wasn’t the African nation’s goal.
It was seeing an old friend walk onto the pitch; Olivier Ntcham.
I was pretty amazed, in part because he’s French. I didn’t know he had dual nationality, and I certainly didn’t know that he had been selected for their national team, far less that he was playing at the World Cup finals.
And here’s the thing; he wasn’t bad at all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t brilliant and he didn’t look as if he could win the game on his own or anything, but he did well. He even beat a couple of defenders to get a shot on target.
Of course, his team won the match and it must have been a huge moment for him and the rest of them. I’m sure the commentator said that it was an African nation’s first ever victory against the Brazilians. Which is quite something to have played a part in.
It was good to see an ex-Celtic player doing something like that, but let’s be honest; it only serves to remind us that on his game Ntcham was a very good footballer. The problem is that we never saw enough of him doing it. He was terribly inconsistent.
He’s at Swansea now. That was his third cap for Cameroon yesterday. He’s starting to put his career back together after some high profile snafus. He’s 26 and I can’t help but think that a player with his potential should be at a much higher level already.
But a World Cup appearance will do him no harm. It actually does us no harm either, as he was at Celtic Park recently enough to have netted us a few more bucks on top of what we’ve earned from our current crop of players being there.
Ollie should have done much more at Celtic. He had some great performances against the Ibrox NewCo and he scored a wonderful winner in Rome against Lazio … but we all feel a bit short-changed by his time in our club’s jersey.
For all that, I was impressed by his drive yesterday and remain convinced that there’s a good player in there if he can find some consistency. I continue to wish him well.
there was a player in there but he was just another wage grabber lazy sod .
There were lots of stories about him being eligible for the Cameroon while he was at Celtic. At that point he was knocking them back, which seemed odd to me at the time since he never looked likely to be anywhere near the French first team. Though he had been with the u21s around that time, so he was in their system and possibly felt there was some chance.
How is his his appearance in a decent World Cup result for his team, where they were nevertheless put out of the tournament, likely to earn Celtic anything? We didn’t sell him to anyone, he was released by Celtic because no one thought he was worth a transfer fee.
Because he played in the World Cup finals and as it was within 2 years of being a Celtic player the club are due a payment from FIFA.
Really? Even though he left for free? That’s a mental magic money tree rule. FIFA have to pay money to every club any player at the World Cup has played for over the last two years? That’s mad. What an insane way to give proportionately large amounts of money to already very wealthy clubs (given that the wealthiest one will be best represented in the competition). Madness, but, cool. Free money for doing absolutely nothing at all.