Cedric Gogua is one of the strongest players in the world. According to his agent.
Yaroslavl “Shinnik” announced the transfer of the 29-year-old Ivorian defender, with whom he signed a contract until the end of the season. For Gogua, this is already the fifth Russian club in his career, and in total he managed to change 12 teams.
Cedric himself does not give interviews very often, which makes him very different from his outrageous agent Dmitry Selyuk.
Finest hour
The general public learned about the tall, thin defender in the summer of 2019. July and August of that year still remain the peak of his career. Before this, Gogua managed to change a lot of teams, many of which he left with scandal. There were cases of being brought to a police station in Serbia, problems with alcohol and questions about the accuracy of passport data.
Cedric’s European career started at the age of 20, when he left Cote d’Ivoire and ended up in Finland. Since then, he has updated his club registration on average twice a year:
SIC (Finland, 2014) → Partizan (Serbia, 2016) → Riga (Latvia, 2017) → Kairat (Kazakhstan, 2017) → SKA-Khabarovsk (Russia, 2018) → Daugavpils (Latvia) , 2019)
2019 was a record year in this regard: then he managed to play for three clubs at once and change teams twice during one transfer window. In the summer, Selyuk brought him and five other Africans to Tambov, for which Gogua scored in his first game against Spartak, successfully playing on a set piece.
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Another round later, he again proved useful in someone else’s penalty area, hitting the Orenburg goal. Alexander Grigoryan, who then headed the Tambovites, was delighted with the newcomer:
— Gogua is a football player of extraordinary qualities. I put this football player on his feet, I understand his level. Having such a central defender, you must understand that you have a diamond in your hands that needs to be sharpened,” Grigoryan explained in an interview with the Championship.
It was then that Selyuk first began to extol Gogua to unprecedented heights. One might think that together with Grigoryan they are participating in some strange post-ironic flash mob:
– Gogua can easily play in the Premier League, this is 100%, he was created for this league, Manchester United or another English club is not fantasy for him. He could already go there, but the problem is that he doesn’t have any matches in the national team,” Selyuk said with a serious face.
Gogua’s qualities attracted CSKA, which urgently needed a central defender. This is where Cedric and his agent hit the jackpot: if in Tambov the player received a modest 250 thousand rubles a month by RPL standards, then at the Moscow club his salary increased eightfold. At the same time, the club gave him a contract for four years at once! Surprisingly, he also managed to score a winning goal for the army team in the first game against Arsenal.
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Gogua’s finest hour did not last long. Very soon, Viktor Gancharenko sent the defender to the reserve after one disastrous game and made an enemy in Selyuk. The agent agreed to completely absurd accusations of racism against the coach.
— I find Gancharenko’s position towards Gogua strange. To put it mildly, it smacks of racism. What does this mean? This speaks of some kind of childhood ambition. The fact that the person, perhaps without whose approval Gogua was taken, now wants to take it out on him, Selyuk told Sport24.
CSKA even had to issue a statement in which the club threatened the agent with legal proceedings. This did not particularly frighten Seluk, who continued to criticize the club and the head coach personally.
A year without a club and a season in Tajikistan
Any agent tries to defend his player in the press, but in the case of Gogua this took on a completely grotesque coloration. The player ultimately played only five matches for CSKA. At the end of the season, he was loaned to Rotor, and then the contract was terminated early by paying a penalty.
Selyuk assured in numerous interviews that such a player would be torn off in any league, but problems arose with further employment. In the winter of 2022, the agent tried to place Gogua in the Kazakh Turan, but soon after signing the contract, Cedric left the team without ever playing for it. After this, the defender remained without a club for about a year. Last winter he almost ended up in Khimki, and watching him at a club near Moscow gave him another great quote from Selyuk.
— One person asked Cedric a question: isn’t he afraid of competition in Khimki? To this Gogua very correctly replied that he has no competition there. He could have competition in Real Madrid and Barcelona, but in Khimki he doesn’t,” said the Match TV agent.
Despite this, it was not possible to agree on a contract with the Russian club. But there was an option in Tajikistan, where last year he played for the best team in the country, Istiklol. Selyuk again began to sing the praises of his ward, referring to the words of head coach Igor Cherevchenko. At the same time, for some reason the agent touched the Rostov player:
“He had been working with him for more than a month and asked me: “I can’t understand where there was any negativity against this guy? He is a super footballer and ticks all the boxes.” Although I will answer why there was negativity. Because there are all sorts of scoundrels and scoundrels who say that Cedric is such and such.
At the same time, someone of worse class, some Osipenko, is called up to the Russian national team, after which the clubs ask 7 million for him. And someone is interested in him! And who needs a free competitor, Cedric, when there is Osipenko for that kind of money? — Selyuk noted for Match TV.
This winter, Gogua managed to return to Russia on his second attempt. It took him only a few days to undergo a trial at Shinnik and sign a short-term contract with the Yaroslavl club.
Cedric Gogua / Photo: ©
FC Shinnik— Gogua deserves to be in the best RPL clubs. Therefore, now he will be at Shinnik, and in May the main RPL clubs will take a closer look at him,” Selyuk told Sport24.
So far, Cedric’s prospects are hard to believe, but it certainly won’t be boring with him and his agent.
