It’s been a slow start at Goodison but Senegal forward who could have been playing for Chelsea at Everton in the FA Cup is determined to show his worth

There is only a hint of frustration from Oumar Niasse when discussing an inauspicious start to his Everton career. “I have to be on the pitch to know exactly what’s going on in the Premier League,” says the Senegal international. “When you don’t start, you never know.” Six weeks after his £13.5m transfer from Lokomotiv Moscow, he and his new employers are still waiting to find out.

Football has often tested Niasse’s patience and the move to Goodison Park has been no exception. The striker’s father, Makhone, refused to allow his youngest son to pursue a professional career until the age of 17 because of the financial burden on the family and concern at the prospects of success. His first chance to impress on the European stage, at the Norwegian side Brann, resulted in misery and a swift return to Senegal.

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Having realised his dream move to England on 1 February via successful spells in Russia and Turkey the 25-year-old has made three substitute appearances totalling 25 minutes for Roberto Martínez’s team. Work permit issues, a wrist injury and a lack of match fitness after last playing for Lokomotiv in December have contributed to the false start. Last Saturday Niasse was introduced with 14 minutes remaining against West Ham United and with 10-man Everton leading 2-0. The eventual 3-2 defeat brought scathing criticism of the striker, though more was reserved for Martínez’s costly decision to withdraw Aaron Lennon for him and the latest evidence of Everton’s inability to defend an advantage.

With Farhad Moshiri attending his first game on Saturday since the Premier League approved the billionaire’s purchase of a 49.9% stake in Everton, the FA Cup quarter-final against Chelsea offers Niasse, Martínez and co a perfect moment to respond to the doubters.

“I am a fighter,” Niasse says. “Football is not easy and just getting a professional contract means people must respect you because you have something. Even if it’s one quality, you have it. When I feel very good, when I feel ready to play, the fans will see someone who always wants to have the ball, someone who always wants to win, someone who always wants to run. This kind of player is someone who is focused on fighting every time he has the shirt and is on the pitch. I am going to fight.”

The rush to judge Niasse after three cameo displays for Everton is in contrast to his upbringing in Ouakam, where the striker spent most of his adolescence fighting resistance from his father over his chosen profession.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Oumar Niasse with Everton in the Community’s Down’s Syndrome football team at Finch Farm. Photograph: Everton FC/Everton FC via Getty Images

“I don’t want to say I was a bad boy but I was not good. My dad never slapped me but my big brothers always slapped me and told me not to play football. Whenever I had five minutes I would go out and you would not see me for three or four hours because I was 12 years old playing football with guys who were 20. I had a lot of leg injuries, I broke my leg twice and still have a lot of scars, and my dad had to spend a lot of money he couldn’t afford at the hospital. He had a lot of problems with me. After one time in hospital he said: ‘After this, if you start to play football again I will kill you.’ But I never thought I would do anything else in my life than play football.

“I am from a poor family in Senegal. I have five brothers and two sisters and I was the craziest. My dad was a bus driver and didn’t think I could make a life out of football or that it would support us in life. He thought if you wanted a family you had to go to school, learn something and try to get a normal job. It was only when my brother [Baye Ibrahima] went to Nancy Lorraine in 2007 that my dad realised this could be a career for us and started to let me play. In my first year I was selected for the under-18s of the national team. I had played two games in 2009, I was just starting to be a real professional, when my dad passed away. Life became more complicated for me after that.”

Niasse is speaking in fluent English as he attends a training session with Everton in the Community’s Down’s syndrome football team. His wife, Sirra, is from Gambia but has lived in Manchester for almost a decade and the striker travelled regularly to the city during his 18 months with Lokomotiv. He credits his language skills, however, to the response to a problematic spell at Brann, where injuries limited Niasse to three substitute outings in six months.

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“Whenever we had English at school I would go off and play football so I never had a good relationship with my English teachers,” he says. “I thought English was not for me but when I went to Norway I was so bad at English I couldn’t speak to anyone. When I went back to Senegal, I realised I needed to learn if I wanted to make it as a footballer so I got out all of my old books from school and started again. Then I met my wife, who speaks Senegalese and English very well, and it became much easier.”

It was Niasse’s form in this season’s Europa League that alerted Martínez to his potential as a forward or a winger. Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Newcastle United also monitored a striker who, despite his quiet introduction at Goodison, was named the Russian Premier League’s player of the year for 2015. And he could have been lining up against Everton on Saturday had Chelsea not dispensed with José Mourinho’s services.

“My manager told me Mourinho was interested,” Niasse says. “He said Mourinho liked the way I play and had been looking at me since I was in Turkey [with Akhisar Belediyespor]. He was very interested in me for this last transfer window but then he was sacked.”

Everton must hope his successor, Guus Hiddink, does not destroy their FA Cup ambition as he did in 2009.

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