When Manchester United signed Odion Ighalo on loan from Shanghai Shenhua on the last day of the English Premier League transfer window in January, many football fans and journalists saw it as a sign of how far the club has fallen in a short space of time. A few short years ago, they were signing Falcao, Angel di Maria, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and Paul Pogba.
Now they were sending for a 30-year-old who had one good season with Watford, four years previously. Fans of other clubs openly laughed at the move. Even the most loyal of Manchester United fans were underwhelmed.
In Ighalo’s home nation of Nigeria, the reaction couldn’t be more different. According to the man himself, people were extremely excited. Nigerians who supported other clubs decide to switch their loyalties to United because Ighalo was playing for the Old Trafford team. Neighborhoods close to where Ighalo grew up held parties.
In the most unlikely of transfer deals, their former hometown hero had become the first-ever Nigerian player to wear Manchester United’s shirt. United may not be the team they were in the 1990s or the first decade of the 21st century, but they’re still a huge club with a worldwide fanbase. A Nigerian playing for them is a big deal, and that’s how it’s been received by the country’s football-loving people.
So far, Ighalo appears to have acquitted himself to playing for the club very well. It’s early days, but he’s made a few brief appearances from the substitutes bench, and scored in the first game he started against Belgium’s Club Brugge.
In doing so, he scored his first-ever goal in European competition. Ighalo has been embraced warmly by the club’s supporters, too.
Their initial skepticism was washed away the moment that they discovered that Ighalo was a boyhood Manchester United fan, and accepted a pay cut to make his dream of playing for the club come true. In that moment, he became one of their own. They already sing songs about him, and there’s a palpable sense of excitement from United fans whenever he’s on the pitch.
My first Manchester derby?what a day.God is the Greatest ?? pic.twitter.com/T9gOKJRyUI
— Odion Jude Ighalo (@ighalojude) March 8, 2020
This has all the makings of one of those transfer moves that works out by chance. Sometimes, football works that way. A manager’s job is very similar to the job (or at least the aspiration) of someone who’s logged into an online slots website and is trying to make a profit before they run out of cash.
They know what a winning line looks like, but they can’t force one to appear. All an online slots player can do is gamble and hope that the right combination turns up sooner rather than later. In signing Ighalo when it became clear that Joshua King couldn’t be acquired from Bournemouth, United took a huge gamble, and yet it may be the one that completes their ideal line-up. When everything lines up for you in UK Online Slots, it leads to a jackpot. United’s jackpot is qualification for the Champions League after their most indifferent season in years. They might just get it.
No matter what happens, though, there’s no guarantee that Ighalo would be around to take part in those Champions League games should they arrive next season. The Nigerian could score ten league goals and follow up by scoring the winner in the Europa League final should United get that far in the competition, and he could easily find himself back in China after May regardless.
In a move that was seen as unusual in the context of modern loans, there’s no permanent transfer clause in Ighalo’s loan contract. United aren’t under any obligation to buy the striker and haven’t pre-agreed a fee for doing so. Perhaps more pertinently, Ighalo’s Chinese club are under no obligation to sell him. If he does well for United and his profile is raised, they’ll likely want to capitalize on their asset by keeping hold of him for the 2021 season.
Not agreeing on the terms of a permanent deal in advance might be something that comes back to haunt Manchester United and manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, but the decision to omit such a clause is understandable when you look at the way loan deals have worked for them in the past.
Their two-year loan deal for Carlos Tevez ended in humiliation when he left Old Trafford to cross Manchester and sign for Manchester City instead.
They paid over the odds to have a permanent transfer clause included in their loan deal for Radamel Falcao, only to be disappointed when it became apparent that Falcao was a pale shadow of the player he’d been in years past, and their money had been wasted.
Considering the above, it’s easy to see why United might pass on the Nigerian. Ighalo is thirty years old and has played more football than he has ahead of him. By the start of next season, he’ll be 31. Manchester United have probably looked at the situation and concluded that next season, with Marcus Rashford fit again, Mason Greenwood a year older, Anthony Martial available, and Alexis Sanchez back from his loan at Inter Milan, they have no need for a further forward player.
Stepping back from the emotion of the situation, they may even be right. Even if Sanchez is removed from that equation based on his indifferent form and his injury history, a striking lineup of Rashford, Martial, and Greenwood backed up by the emerging Tahith Chong is probably all United need. Ighalo would probably be a player too many, and without a pre-agreed fee in place, he’d probably be too expensive a purchase to justify spending money on if he’s likely to spend most of the season on the bench.
The other side of that argument is that there should always be exceptions to every rule, and Ighalo has never been given the opportunity to play at this level before. If he can prove himself, then he’s surely worth a permanent move and a two-year contract. Football players don’t retire in their early 30s anymore – former United stars Zlatan Ibrahimovich and Cristiano Ronaldo are evidence of that.
If Ighalo contributes to the club’s success between now and the end of the season, it only seems right that he’s also at Old Trafford next season to enjoy the fruits of his labor. It’s taken all these years for a Nigerian footballer to get the chance to wear a Manchester United’s shirt. It would be a terrible shame if it were all over after a few short months.
