Football has undoubtedly become a lot more cosmopolitan now, and you only have to look at the latest Rothmans Yearbook to prove that fact. The 'blue bible' used to feature a Foreign Legion page for a few years which listed all the players born overseas who had played in the League that season, discounting the countless Irishmen of course. They gave up printing that section three years ago because it had spread over three whole pages, and it was only going to increase. There were representatives from unlikely outposts such as Algeria, Bosnia, Chile, the Ivory Coast, Macedonia and Slovenia, as well as a host of Caribbean players such as Rodney Jack of St Vincent and Earl Jean from St Lucia, not forgetting our own adopted West Indian Jason Roberts, an international for the island of Grenada. Clubs' most capped players were no longer one-cap Welshmen from 1932, as Hull City's became Theo Whitmore of Jamaica and indeed Rovers' Neil Slatter was overtaken by Latvian legend Vitalijs Astafjevs. A look at Leyton Orient's pages revealed that alongside Eire international Tony Grealish on seven caps, there are also two Nigerians - John Chiedozie and Tunji Banjo (a rather unfortunate name if he were a striker). Chiedozie was born in Africa and came over to sign for Orient as a youngster, where he proceeded to win seven caps before earning a massive £600,000 transfer in August 1981 to Notts County, who had just won promotion to the old First Division, and whilst there he made two more international outings. Banjo was only two months his senior and won all his caps whilst with the London club, but far from being native Nigerian like Chiedozie, the midfielder was actually born in Kennington. Seeing as this was more than twenty years ago, it was rather a novelty, and evidently Orient became the first league club to have two Nigerian international players on their books. The pair played in the build-up to the 1980 African Nations Cup staged in Nigeria, but failed to make the team that won the final 3-0 against Algeria in Lagos. More recently however, another notable international has graced Brisbane Road. Amara Simba was one of France's bright prospects of the late 1980s, but in the summer of 1998 he ended up at Leyton Orient in the twilight of a distinguished career, yet one which never quite fulfilled its potential. He began at Versailles before moving on to Cannes, and in 1986 he got his big move to Paris Saint Germain, who had just won the French Championship. After waiting for his chance with PSG, he eventually made his mark and broke into the national side just as they qualified for the 1992 European Championships in Sweden. He struck goals in his first two games for France, a 5-1 friendly win in Poland and a 3-1 victory in a Euro qualifier with Iceland in Paris. His third appearance was a glamorous warm-up international at Wembley against England, where Alan Shearer in fact won his first cap and scored in a 2-0 home win. Unfortunately this was to be his last match for France as Simba got injured shortly before the Championships and was replaced by Montpellier's Fabrice Divert in the final squad. He was so close to making it that he was in my Panini Euro 92 sticker album, but then again so were the disqualified Yugoslavia team. Once he had recovered, he made a surprise start in the 1993 UEFA Cup Quarter-Final 2nd Leg against Real Madrid at the Parc des Princes - his first appearance for PSG in Europe that year. Trailing 3-1 from the first leg, the Parisians were one-up after half-an-hour through George Weah and left it until the final ten minutes until they scored twice more thanks to David Ginola and Valdo to all but seal a great comeback. Ivan Zamorano then silenced the home crowd in injury time as Real equalised on aggregate, but shortly after, Antoine Kombouare glanced home a Valdo free-kick to steal the match in the 96th minute. Simba failed to feature in the semi-final defeats to Juventus and that summer he moved on to Arsène Wenger's Monaco. The tiny principality were in the 1993/94 Champions Cup after winning the previous year's title and Simba played in the first round match with AEK Athens only to be knocked down the pecking order by none other than Jürgen Klinsmann. Monaco amazingly went all the way to the semi-finals as well, where they met AC Milan in a one-off game at the San Siro. Simba came on for Claude Puel after an hour but by then Milan were 2-0 up and added a third late on to reach the Athens final where they met Barcelona. That year he was shipped off to Caen, before spells at Lille and Mexican club Léon brought him to British shores and he signed for Orient in October 1998. After initially impressing in his first season, the veteran striker faded in his second and was loaned out to Kingstonian on Transfer Deadline Day. Instead of a quiet swansong in the Conference, Simba smashed six goals in eight league games and then scored a sensational winner in the FA Trophy Final against Kettering, and the Frenchman well and truly went out with a bang. © Chris Chappell - October 2002 Back to Index