Do we like Jay-Jay Okocha?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company turned up and there's real charity work, but an old tax charge and thin coverage of his views keep it from the top shelf.
Okocha grew up in Enugu in a modest family, where he says a football was the only toy they had. He played barefoot as a kid, got his first boots around 12, and dreamed of pulling on the shirt of local side Enugu Rangers. Everything that came after started with that hunger.
From there it was Germany, then Fenerbahçe and Paris Saint-Germain, and in 2002 a move to Bolton Wanderers. He spent four Premier League seasons there, with 14 goals and 11 assists in 124 matches. Bolton fans still treat him like a local hero, which is not bad for a bloke whose party trick was making defenders look silly.
The stain is a tax one. A Lagos charge filed in 2017 accused him of failing to file a return and pay income tax, and a judge issued a bench warrant after he missed several court dates. ThisDay said it couldn't reach him for comment. I couldn't open the follow-up reports, which say it was later settled out of court, so treat that part as unconfirmed here.
On the harm check, the record is quiet. Nothing turned up on him and LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no pattern of dodgy company either. That could be a clean sheet or just a thin file, since most coverage is football talk. In January 2025 he also denied giving an interview that had him calling for the NFF board to go, so he doesn't seem to be picking fights.
The good stuff is real. In 2021 he joined a Bolton legends charity match raising money for motor neurone disease research, in front of about 13,000 fans. In 2026 the retroactive World Cup award finally recognised his night against Spain in 1998, and he thanked the sponsors who created it.
So: a footballing great with an old tax blot and no sign of the grievance-and-conspiracy slide we watch for. We'd happily cheer him on, with the caveat that the file on his views is slim.