Manchester United fans had a rather amusing song for Eric Djemba-Djemba during his time there. ‘So good they named him twice’, they would chant whenever the Cameroonian lunged into yet another crunching tackle. And if Djemba-Djemba has his way, fans of Chennaiyin FC may be chanting exactly the same.
The midfielder, who in the dawn of his career made the jump from France to Manchester, has chosen India for his twilight years.
“You have players like Nicolas Anelka, Robert Pires, Alessandro Del Piero and David Trezeguet playing here. I have Marco Materazzi as my coach and I get to play alongside Silvestre and Elano. Why would I say no?” he asks.
While the big names in the Indian Super League may have swayed his mind, it was a chat with a couple of long-time friends that removed any lingering doubt.
First he talked to Mikael Silvestre, a friend since United days. Then he called Bernard Mendy, who had played with him in Denmark. “They all had good things to say about Chennai. They also told me you had a couple of great young players like Jeje. Moreover, it is easy for me that I played with Silvestre and Mendy. They know my game and I know theirs.”
Looking forward to the future at Chennai, he cannot help but travel back to his United past. His time at Old Trafford was not easy, but he still has a lot of good memories.
“I remember when I first met Alex Ferguson. It was at a Champions League game and I was playing for Rennes. We went to Old Trafford and lost 5-1. But after the game, Ferguson came to our dressing room, shook my hand and said ‘well played’. He did not say anything, but I knew he was going to sign me, which he did in a few months.”
At United, though, he struggled to adapt to his moniker the ‘next Roy Keane’. And to make things worse, he was the next Keane when the original was still at the club.
“I had a good run of games initially when Keane was out injured. But then he regained fitness and he was back in the team. It was hard for me to get back in. But still I got to play with the Cristiano Ronaldo, Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes, which is a big thing,” he says. His United stint ended when he was sold to Aston Villa after two years and for most Red Devils supporters, his story ends there.
However, the Cameroon World-Cupper has a happier ending to reveal — a poignant moment when he finally achieved closure for everything he had to deal with Manchester United.
“It happened a few years after my Old Trafford exit. I was playing in Denmark, and I was adjudged the best player in the league. Ferguson was present at the awards ceremony. He walked up to me and said he was happy for me. He told me that if he had signed me at that stage of my life, I probably would have been a success at Old Trafford. It was a very nice thing.”
