The interesting back story of Obbi Oularé, the gentle giant

Obbi Oulare says the fixture he is most looking forward to as a Watford player is the one against Arsenal, the team he supports. It is not wise to argue with someone who is 6ft 5in but surely the match after the home game with the Gunners, on Saturday October 24 against Stoke City, will be a significant day for the family. Fifteen years ago, when Oulare junior was just four, Souleymane Oulare, his father, almost lost his life after making his debut in English football for the Potters against Northampton Town.

“I woke in the middle of the night and I was so scared I went to the hotel reception,” Souleymane told the Stoke Sentinel. “They called for an ambulance because they could see I couldn’t breathe normally. I was scared for the next two days. At one point I was coughing up blood and it was then I was thinking ‘am I going to die?'”

Thankfully, he didn’t, but he was ruled out the next four months only to make the unlikeliest of returns for the Second Division semi-final play-off against Cardiff City. His comeback couldn’t have been more dramatic. He came on as a 71st minute substitute for Chris Iwelumo, of all people, with his side still trailing 2-1 from the first leg at the Britannia Stadium. James O’Connor sent the match into extra time with a 90th-minute goal before Oulare grabbed a 114th minute winner to send Stoke to the Millenium Stadium.

From there they beat Brentford and five seasons after that they were in the Premier League. But that winner against Cardiff represented the zenith for Oulare, the one-time Belgian League player of the year. He never played again for the Potters or even featured in a matchday squad.

Souleymane would therefore have represented a wise old head to have as a sounding board on the early morning train journey from Brussel-Zuid to London St Pancras International on the morning of transfer deadline day.

“I was in doubt that it was a big step but he told me I had to be confident as he knows I can do it,”Obbi Oulare said. “He trusts me and I listen to him.”

And so he should. “Obbi is great with his back to goal, good technique and speed,” said Souleymane after watching his son make his senior debut, as an 18-year-old, against Genk, his former club. “I hope that he will become better than me. That’s the wish of every parent.”

It’s also the hope that their offspring remain humble and retain a degree of humility. There was certainly no delusions of grandeur when Obbi walked unassumingly into a suite at Sopwell House yesterday to meet the Watford press pack. Well, as unassuming as you possibly can be when you are just shorter than Steven Finn and wearing electric blue trainers. He shook the hand of everybody and spoke incredibly softly. He is your classic gentle giant, perhaps too gentle for the Club Brugges coach Michel Preud’homme in the first leg of the Champions League qualifier against Manchester United last month.

“I had some family problems and during the game I was on the pitch but I was thinking about something else,” Oulare said. Preud’homme, the former Belgium goalkeeper, is reported to have given him a dressing down in front of his teammates in the changing room. Oulare felt compelled to issue a public apology.

“I did not play well so that’s why I apologised to my teammates and the coach,” said the striker.

Oulare does have his good days, particularly for the Belgium youth teams. He scored four in six games for the U18s and six in five for the U19s. He also signed off his Club Brugges career, which kind of finished before it got started, with a goal in the 7-1 rout of Standard Liege.

The obvious potential is why Gino Pozzo was apparently quite relaxed when Blackburn Rovers rejected his early summer bid of £5million for Rudy Gestede. He also did not panic when Quique Sanchez Flores told him he was not sold on the Rovers forward. Pozzo is always one, if not two, steps ahead when it comes to recruitment and knew he had an alternative striker in mind, one who would cost around three quarters of the fee Blackburn wanted for Gestede and was six years younger. One with more attributes than Gestede.

Step forward Oulare. The towering Belgium striker might have looked like a panic buy on deadline day but he had been on the radar since early summer.

“The first contact I had was in June and I was on holiday,” said Oulare.”It was the same contact as a few clubs did and then I did not hear something for a while.”

Everything changed on a whirlwind last two days of the window when Club Brugges signed not one but two strikers. It is not clear if Preud’homme wanted to offload Oulare and use the money to sign Leandro Pereira and Jelle Vossent as replacements or if the coach reluctantly accepted his Under-19 striker was moving on to bigger and better things and moved swiftly to sign cover. Either way it sounds like Oulare had his nose put out of joint.

“On deadline day I saw that two new strikers arrived [at Club Brugges] and I called my agent directly,” he said. “I was happy there and maybe stay one more year but it was difficult. They told me I was going to be the first striker and then on the deadline day they took two new strikers so, for me, it was clear I had to leave. There were other clubs but Watford were the best option. You only get a chance like this one time in your life and I didn’t have to think about it too much.”

Oulare was in and out of London Colney in a day, returning to Belgium to fly to Latvia with the U21 side just hours after signing a five-year contract. The fee? It is undisclosed but a source close to the deal says it is not as much as the £6m the club paid for Etienne Capoue but more than was shelled out for Jose Manuel Jurado. It’s probably around the same mark as the £4.5m Steven Berghuis cost. Oulare trained for the first time with his new teammates on Monday and did this…

VINE: Obbi Oularé announces himself on the scene… #watfordfc https://t.co/un1D57tcn9 — Watford FC (@WatfordFC) September 8, 2015

“I was happy to see it on video,” Oulare said somewhat bashfully. Sanchez Flores, however, was not blinded by one moment of magic in training and he wants the Belgian to spend time acclimatising to his methods, integrating himself with his squad members and working on his fitness.

“[Quique] welcomed me on the first day and said that I have to take it easy and be attentive in training,” he said. Interestingly, he was pitched alongside Troy Deeney in at least one session.

Oulare has been playing close attention to one player in particular and, like we were in Germany, was struck immediately by the class and work ethic of a certain Frenchman.

“Capoue is really relaxed but everything he does is perfect,” he said. “I will learn a lot from training with players like Etienne Capoue. I am here to enjoy and learn a lot off other players.”

The comparisons with Christian Benteke are obvious given Oulare’s frame and nationality but he could be as powerful as Romelu Lukaku once he fills out. He models himself more on Zlatan Ibrahimovic, however, and is certainly braced for the rough and tumble of English football.

“I like contact because I am tall and big but also I am fast so I like to run with the ball,” he said. “But my strength is asking for the ball in the space. When I play with my back to goal I like to help keep the ball.”

A graduate of the same Lille youth system that spawned Eden Hazard and Divock Origi, Oulare went out for dinner with Watford youth product Tom Rosenthal this week and it won’t be long before he is heading into London to meet up with another Belgium Under-21 teammate. Charles Musonda, 18, was signed by Chelsea three years ago and is part of their all-conquering youth team. They share the same agent.

“I know him well,” Oulare said. “We play a lot of games together and this player is just crazy, really fantastic. Technically I never saw a player like that.”

Musonda has been linked with a move away from Chelsea because, surprise, surprise, his chances of breaking into the first team are limited.

“It’s difficult at Chelsea because they even have big players who are on the bench,” Oulare said. “I can imagine it is not easy for young players.”

It should be much easier for Oulare at Watford once he gets up to speed and is let off the leash by Sanchez Flores.