Who? Birmingham? 9 million? Don’t you mean Real Madrid?

Charles N’Zogbia

22 November 2010

In an interview with the Daily Star, former Newcastle midfielder Charles N’Zogbia let us into his egotistical mindset with some comments about his current contractual situation at Wigan Athletic:

“Wigan’s just a stepping stone. They know very well I’m not a player who is going to stay at the club. I give 100 per cent on the pitch, but, if there’s a bigger club that wants me, the manager and the president have always told me the door is open for discussion”.

How professional. Although Steve Bruce, who signed N’Zogbia from Newcastle when manager of Wigan, freely admitted that Wigan was a platform for N’Zogbia to showcase his abilities to bigger clubs, it doesn’t excuse N’Zogbia’s comments as he did exactly the same thing while a Newcastle player under no encouragement from his then manager or chairman. These were his words then as he attempted to tout himself to 3 different clubs in a couple of sentences:

“My agents are talking with Tottenham and Aston Villa, I’m waiting to see what will happen. From what they have told me, Arsenal could also be in the frame, but there hasn’t been a direct approach from them”.

Ambition is not the issue, if anything a player should be commended for wanting to be the best and ply their trade at the highest level, however it is the way in which N’Zogbia has went about securing a move away from Wigan that sticks in the throat. A brazen attempt at lining up a move (isn’t that what his agent gets paid for?) which reeks of a lack of humility, loyalty and commitment to the club paying his wages.

N’Zogbia’s tactic appears to be to pick a team that he fancies playing for and then naming them in a newspaper in a ‘come-and-get-me-plea’. After failing to realize that this didn’t work while a Newcastle player, as he ended up at Real Madrid Wigan, N’Zogbia is applying the same tactic again, this time flirting with French club Olympique Marseille:

“If a big club wants to come in for me, the door is open. Marseille is a big club – no one turns down a club like Olympique Marseille”.

It’s embarrassing really. To be fair to N’Zogbia though, and having been to Wigan, nobody would want to stay there for that long, however his quotes in the press have merely made him look like a sulky untrustworthy individual, perhaps that is why none of the big clubs will take you on Charles? He has also generated an impossible situation for his manager Roberto Martinez who now faces the prospect of raising a generous transfer fee for a want-a-way player, nice one N’Zog.

“When I see certain friends playing in the Champions League or others like Lassana or Florent Sinama-Pongolle with the France team, it makes me drool. I say to myself: Why not me?“

Firstly because nobody likes a drooler, and secondly maybe it’s because you’re just not as good as they are and, unlike Cristiano Ronaldo or Kaka, can’t command a move to whoever you please whenever you please.

The saying, ‘I want never gets’ has never been more appropriate.