Wilfred Ndidi has within two short years become a consistent ball winner in the middle of the park for both the Super Eagles and in the Premier League with Leicester City.
He started out as a central defender, but has since been converted into a classy defensive midfielder, whose ball-winning talent has already been heralded in England.
Ndidi
Such is the remarkable progress he has made that the authoritative Sky Sports ranked him as the No 65th best player in the world in 2017.
The Power Rankings were used to calculate this rating of the Leicester City ace.
The report said Ndidi, 21, has made a commanding start to his career in the Premier League.
Ndidi was named ahead of several top Premier League stars like N’Golo Kante, who he was supposed to have replaced at Leicester City, Metsul Ozil (Arsenal), and David de Gea (Manchester United).
Leicester City splashed out 15 million pounds for Ndidi to join them from Belgian club Genk.
Last season, he made 17 appearances in the league for ‘The Foxes’ and scored twice from his defensive midfield position, while he has featured in 22 games in the Premier League thus far this term.
His stats have been impressive – he has scored two goals this season, created six chances and made an assist and completed 520 passes.
He also has a pass accuracy of 76% with 93% of this being forward passes, according to Squawka.
He was also named Leicester City Young Player of the Year after just half a season at the club.
At a time last season, Leicester had to dismiss speculations the Nigeria star could quit the King Power Stadium for a bigger club in England.
But then manager Craig Shakespeare was quick to play down such interest.
“We can do nothing about speculation,” he said then.
“It is a credit to him, in terms of the way he has performed. But also the way he is. He is a very good professional, very mature head on his shoulders.
“I have no problem with speculation, but we have our best players tied up. Of course, there can always be bids, we can always turn them down. Football is football, you’ll always get bids for good players.
“Speaking to Wilfred, he is very happy here. He knows that we have given him the opportunity and I am sure that hopefully he will be a player here for a long, long time.”
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