Steve Worgu: Whipping Up To Europe.

In the normal football world, athletes being caught on the wrong side of the law, or on the wrong side of photographers, with alcohol driving the bus isn’t all that rare. Hell, it might even get you a starting spot at a London club. Most of the time it’s a penal slap on the wrist and a shot to their precious public image.

For Steve Worgu of Sudanese club Al-Merrikh, it’s forty lashes. Quite literally.

This isn’t so much a football thing as a cultural one but for two reasons:

i. Steve Worgu is thought of as one of the best footballers in Africa at the moment – he lead the African Champions League in scoring last year – and, at 19, destined for European nights very shortly.

ii. Steve Worgu is actually Nigerian and was lured to the Sudanese domestic league not for its bountiful glories, but for the bountiful bounties they offered.

Well, that’s not entirely fair. He claims it to be the “seriousness of their offer”. They also happened to have offered him more money than anyone else. And whenever one hears “seriousness of the offer”, the mind immediately makes the more money = more desire = seriousness lineage.

Steve was busted for drinking while driving and in the Muslim Sudanese north, a DUI isn’t the only legal faux pas – drinking alcohol period is also a crime. And for this he’s received a rather paltry fine relative to his salary, but also a flogging of forty lashes. A slightly primal but nevertheless effective form of punishment, particularly for a high profile footballer.

This really speaks to the difficulties of choosing a club in a country, region or city so different from one’s own – Robinho’s suddenly breakup with Manchester comes immediately to mind – primarily when money was a factor (see: Robinho again). That sometimes, maybe the worst outcome is a player getting precisely what he’s asked for.

But most of all what this tells us is…Steven Worgu: Coming to a European city near you. Soon.

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Category: World Football