BIT O’ RED’S BORN ENTERTAINER

IF you haven’t yet seen Joseph Ndo, you at least have to see his back heel.

Last Christmas, Sky Sports Soccer AM Show selected their Best Showboat moments of 2010.

Dimitar Berbatov’s overhead goal against Liverpool made the cut along with some flashes of magic from Didier Drogba, Cristiano Ronaldo, Fernando Torres, Samir Nasri and Mario Balotelli, yet probably the most outrageous bit of skill of the lot came courtesy of some showtime at the Showgrounds.

The clip starts with Ndo receiving a throw-in from his Sligo Rovers team-mate, left full Iarfhlaith Davoren, down by the corner flag, his back to the UCD goal. Ndo brings the ball under control and starts to dribble away from goal and up along the wing to give himself a better angle to pick out a pass, when he spots that he’s being double-teamed while Davoren is free behind him. And so, rather than pivot and try to slide the ball through, Ndo calculates why turn and take up all that time when he can just casually drag the ball with his right foot onto the heel of his left foot and let it propel the ball up into the air and land right onto Davoren’s feet, leaving UCD completely wrong-footed, Davoren free to cross the ball into the box, and the supporters in the stands oohing and chuckling at his latest trick.

Joseph Ndo’s Amazing Back Heel has attracted over 700,000 hits on YouTube and a flood of compliments from all around the world, but while it was an extraordinary bit of skill, the 35-year-old Cameroonian would like to think it was hardly extraordinary for him. It was typical, natural, instinct.

Sport has always been about entertainment for Ndo. He grew up in the Cameroon capital of Yaounde, the son of a comedian who emboldened him to make a living out of his passion and talent. His childhood hero was Michael Jordan and to this day the NBA rather than the Premier League remains his favourite to watch.

“The NBA’s not just about winning but about bringing joy to the fans. That was always the way I played since I was young. The game to me is about joy. When I played for the Cameroon national team, it was like fiesta camp, it was like playing for Brazil. We enjoyed being together because we always knew to enjoy the game.

“We could dance in training, we’d always sing before the game, because okay, we were going to do our job but we were happy. At the end of your career you don’t necessarily just say ‘I won this and that medal.’ The first thing you must be able to say is you really enjoyed what you were doing.”

He talks though not just about entertainment but effectiveness and how they aren’t mutually exclusive.

“You don’t do things just to look good,” he explains.

“You do things to help your team-mate because if it’s just to look good it’s likely going to be a shit ball and that is nonsense. Like that back heel; you do that to try to help your teammate to get the ball and to send the opponents the wrong way. So it is both — show and effective. That is exactly the combination I like.”

It’s a combination Paul Cook favours as well, which probably goes a long way to explaining why the Scouser has been coveted by Scottish Premier League clubs, his Sligo Rovers side this weekend are just 90 minutes away from putting back-to-back FAI Cups together, and especially why Ndo is playing some of the best football of his adventurous career.

“One of the great things about the League of Ireland,” declares Cook, “is that everyone has an opinion on Joseph Ndo.”

On some matters there is widespread consensus. Ndo’s control and general skill level is unquestionable; possibly only Liam Coyle at the peak of his powers with Derry could rival him as the best technician the league has known over the last 25 years.

Nor can it ever be taken away from him that he played 22 times for his country. At the 1998 World Cup he started in all three of his team’s games, keeping Lauren later of Arsenal fame off the team, while four years later when Cameroon were Ireland’s first opponents in Japan, Ndo was still a member of the squad, albeit this time he was the one watching on from the bench.

He’s undoubtedly done his share of travelling and winning in the game. He has played in Switzerland and France where he won a French Cup with Strasbourg, as well as Saudi Arabia and China (“China was amazing,” he says, “the stadiums and training grounds would be beyond your thinking”) before coming to Ireland in 2003.

And since then he has, as Cook rightly says, divided opinion throughout the league.

While some would kindly regard him as one of the league’s great nomads, for others he’d be one of its great mercenaries, Ndo having played for all of the big four Dublin clubs before making the move to Sligo a little over 18 months ago.

He has enthralled supporters and enraged others, inspired some managers and infuriated others.

With Shelbourne he was probably their most impressive performer in their 2004 Champions League qualifying odyssey and in 2006 when he won a second league medal with them he was voted by his fellow professionals as the league’s player of the year.

Bohemians fans will also recall him fondly for his contribution to their 2009 championship success when he again made the PFAI team of the year.

At St Pat’s and Shamrock Rovers, he wouldn’t be as highly regarded. He only played 17 games for the Inchicore club before leaving them for Shels in 2004. Then when he rejoined them in 2007, he made only six appearances before falling out with John McDonnell and was sent out on loan to Rovers where again his appearance record failed to reach into double figures. He seemed to be constantly injured, constantly disgruntled, not worth all the bother and money.

“I’d heard all the talk,” says Cook.

“That he was a moneygrabber, that he won’t play for managers, that he doesn’t train properly; if he doesn’t want to play, he’ll feign injury. And I just don’t buy it.

“I couldn’t speak highly enough about Joseph Ndo. He’s a fantastic professional, the way he conducts himself. He’s been a great ambassador for this club and a great example for our players to look up to. They see him stretching with his stretching ropes; they see that he’s sleeping well, that he’s eating properly.

“I don’t need to worry about what Joseph Ndo does. I know he’s looking after himself. You’ve got to allow Joseph have that feeling that he has your confidence.”

Ndo is a popular figure in the Sligo dressing room. He’s quiet and a teetotaller but still good to come up with a killer one-liner. He’s deeply religious (“God is not just part of my life,” he says, “he is my life; I am grateful to the gift that he placed with me”) and very private (“Joseph’s is the one house none of us have been in,” says one team-mate, even though a good number of the team live in the same rural village of Riverstown where Ndo and his family reside) but that privacy is respected, especially his manager.

Cook would share a similar philosophy to Mickey Harte who once said: “The key to everything is to respect uniqueness.” It’s certainly been the key to Joseph Ndo and why Cook is getting a return out of the player that only Pat Fenlon at Shels and Bohs approximated. Over the last two seasons Ndo has played 58 times for Sligo when he’d played a combined total of just 83 games over the previous five seasons.

Ndo has noticed the secret to Cook’s success and relationship with him. “Paul understands me,” he smiles. “Simple as that. He understands me.”

To illustrate the point, Ndo brings you back to the day of their cup semi-final win over Bohs last month. He’s always last on to the team bus, even when he hurries. This particular day when he came down to the hotel lobby he found himself and Cook were the only ones there; everyone else seemed to be already on the bus.

Instead of rushing Ndo though, Cook told him to sit down on the big comfy sofa by reception; take his time, relax.

“I’m sitting there,” says Ndo, “not knowing what is happening when I then see two players coming down the stairs. So Paul says to them, ‘Okay, guys, get on that bus.’ Then he says to me, ‘You stay there for another bit, Joe. You take your time!’”

Ndo laughs uproariously at that and for the most part since they teamed up, Cook has been laughing as well. Ndo was Sligo’s Dennis Bergkamp signing, a statement that a different way and era was on the way.

“Joey Ndo has been very instrumental in making me the manager I am,” says Cook unashamedly.

“It’s alright having a philosophy and saying we want to pass the ball, but if you’re asking lads who can’t pass the ball to pass it, you’ll end up getting beat looking bad. Joseph was the catalyst to how we play. For too long good players weren’t coming to Sligo Rovers but all that changed when Joseph joined us.”

There’s a story in how he came to Sligo.

“People don’t realise, Joseph signed for us for 500 quid a week,” reveals Cook.

“You’ve heard all the talk he’s only a moneygrabber but you didn’t sign for a club for 500 a week if you’re a moneygrabber. Now, he’s had a substantial rise since, but that’s what he signed originally for, 500 a week, because my philosophy on football and Joseph’s would be very similar.”

For Ndo, that was all-important. “Show” has always been important. He has been on the receiving end of racist chanting, most notably in a Champions League qualifier away at Steaua Bucharest as well as occasionally in the domestic league, but even on that front he has an interesting and positive spin.

“I have never talked about that before because I am okay about it. It is more an issue for the people who run football though I help campaigns because it’s important to send the [right] message for the next generation.

“But if someone abuses me, it doesn’t not affect me. He can’t hurt me but he has to say ‘I saw a good show from him today’.”

When he first came into the league, putting on a good show for the punters wasn’t a priority for most teams. The football was primitive, fearful, regressive.

“Everything was long ball, squeeze; no one was going for the ball, to get the ball, to pass it. I had to fight to bring my ideas [into effect].”

At Sligo he didn’t have to fight. There’s much more football now played throughout the league but nowhere is there more football played than at the Showgrounds, something Ndo takes great pride in. Even though he won leagues with Shels and Bohs, he considers Sligo to be probably the most satisfying phase of his career in the league.

“I remember before I signed for Sligo, other teams would always have the same speech. ‘Sligo is a tough place to go.’ Now the first thing the say is ‘How are we going to stop them?’”

He’s either not sure or not saying where he’ll be next year. He and his family like the tranquillity of Sligo while Cook and Sligo would love him to stay, but that’s something to be sorted out after this cup final. He’s relishing this cup final. He sat out the team’s final league game last weekend as a precautionary measure but a small hamstring strain isn’t going to keep him out of this one.

He’s a big-game player. He’s played in World Cups. He’s been Shels’ standout player in the Champions League, the standout performer in last month’s league win at Shamrock Rovers and was the man of the match in last year’s cup final win, in front of 36,000 people.

As Cook says, “The Aviva Stadium and Joseph Ndo is like a love affair because Joseph comes alive on the big stage.”

Last year he danced onto the pitch after the cup presentation. This year in the dressing room he’ll do a little dance before the game. At all times the pitch is his stage.

Enjoy the show.