Inter milan are a major team in team in world football and they have had some of the biggest names in African football play for them. Kanu, Patrick Viera and Obafemi Martins are some of the more popular ones.
All these players have been vital for their home countries. Today though, i want to profile the Legendary Nwankwo Kanu. Kanu joined the Nerazzurri in 1996 from Ajax where he had won the European Champions league . Earlier on that summer, he led his Nigerian team-mates to olympic glory wining the gold in unbelievable fashion.
That was not the only honour to befall this talented player. Just about the same time he was joining Inter, he was announced as the African footballer of the year. The sad news however was that he received this news on his hospital bed after being diagnosed with a defective heart valve.
That should have been the end of his career. In fact many people had given him little hope of recovering from such a surgery. Everyone except club president Mr. Massimo Moratti who kept on paying his salary even when he was not playing. In Kanu’s on words he says that Mr. Moratti took him like a son.
More than a decade later and Kanu is still going strong. His biggest set back proved to be his launching pad for an amazing career that saw him win the African player of the year award a record two times at just the tender age of 23. There is no doubt that Inter played a big part in moulding Kanu’s future. I wonder though what would have been if he spent more time in Milan.
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