How Sam Allardyce convinced Jay-Jay Okocha and Ivan Campo to join Bolton

Former Bolton manager Sam Allardyce has revealed how he convinced Jay-Jay Okocha, and Ivan Campo to join Bolton against all odds.

After his successes with PSG, Okocha surprisingly joined the Trotters in 2002 and is considered one of the best players in the club’s history, if not the best.

The retired Nigerian midfielder quickly hit the ground running, helping the club to maintain their top-flight status in his first season and winning the Goal of the Season award. He was handed the captaincy in his second season and led the Lancashire side to their first League Cup final in nine years though lost the trophy to Middlesbrough.

He unpleasantly left Bolton, having been stripped of the captaincy, reportedly due to his decision to leave the club for Qatar but regardless, he left the club with a legendary status.

Just like Okocha, Campo’s move to the Trotters was surprising, having moved from Real Madrid though, he had lost his place in the Los Blancos team before coming to England.

He initially joined on loan during the 2002/2003 season before penning a three-year deal in the summer of 2003 and went on to make 194 appearances for Bolton, chipping in 14 goals and 10 assists.

Campo was also notoriously known for his discipline, having received 43 yellow cards and two red cards in the Premier League during his five-year stay with the Wanderers.

Speaking in an interview to talkSPORT, Allardyce revealed how he convinced Okocha, Campo and other stars to join Bolton

“The training ground was portacabins and stuff like that and just two pitches.”

“At least we had a great stadium, didn’t we? So we took them to the Reebok and to the hotel and that was okay.

“After they signed, we took them to the training ground.

“If we’d showed Jay-Jay Okocha and Youri Djorkaeff that they wouldn’t have bothered signing on!

“We managed to improve year on year to make it that much better, but it was a sticking point.

“They used to say ‘well can I see the training ground?’ and we’d say ‘well there’s a lot of working going on at the moment, you won’t see anything really’.

“We sort of blagged our way through it at that time.”

Allardyce also signed the likes of Youri Djorkaeff, El Hadji Diouf and Fernando Hierro during his time with the former Premier League before his departure in 2007.