Currently the starting goalkeeper at Sparta Rotterdam after a free transfer from Fortuna Düsseldorf, Maduka Okoye will soon be arriving at Watford.
The Hornets have spent just over £6.3m on the 22-year-old, who already has 13 caps for Nigeria, but he will not be coming to the club until the beginning of next season.
That’s because the player will be returning on loan to Sparta after the transfer is officialised, where he will finish the current campaign.
Okoye sat down with Transfermarkt in Germany to talk about the transfer, explaining that when a club like Watford come knocking, ‘you just have to do it’.
He said: “Watford with club owner Gino Pozzo simply won me over, with the talks and the trust. They brought me as number one for the Premier League and the Championship.
“I believe in the quality of the team. I pray and hope they stay up. It has to work with this manager”.
One of the main attractions for Okoye was the fact Watford is so near to London, a city he loves, as well as the fact he will be playing with fellow Nigeria internationals William Troost-Ekong, Peter Etebo and Emmanuel Dennis.
As for why he signed now, he said: “I made a conscious decision to sign the contract now in order to clear my head for the qualifying games with the national team and to stay in the league with my current club. I will give everything for it. More clubs would have come by the summer, but I’m out of these transfer stories.
“It’s not about getting as much money out of it as possible, and neither is my management. We are working together to build a career in this sport for myself and to be successful in the long-term – for the next 15 years, God willing”.
The arrival of Okoye will likely mean a transfer away for Daniel Bachmann at some point, who recently explained he was out of the team for ‘non-sporting reasons’, leaving Ben Foster as the current starter under Claudio Ranieri at Watford.
