Former Super Eagles captain Augustine Okocha, popularly known as Jay Jay Okocha has revealed that Fenerbahçe issued him a Turkish passport under a local name during his two years at the club.

Okocha said the club took the step after Paris Saint-Germain came in for his signature and Fenerbahçe insisted he was “not for sale.”

Speaking on the Obi-Wan podcast on Monday, Okocha, popularly known as JJ, said the Turkish club loved him so much that letting him leave became “a good problem” for them.

He said he was asked to pick a Turkish name for the passport and settled on “Muhammed Yahuz,” borrowed from a member of staff he was fond of at the club.

“They gave me Turkish passport with Turkish name. They asked me to choose Turkish name, so the easiest one was Muhammed… was a guy that was working for us. So we all loved him, so I picked his name,” Okocha said.

Okocha said the passport became necessary because Fenerbahçe refused to let him go when PSG’s interest emerged, forcing him to briefly withdraw from training to push the move through.

“When PSG came, they said I’m not leaving, I can’t leave, I’m not for sale. So I had to run away, stop training,” he said.

He added that it was a mark of how much the club valued him.

“It was a problem for me to leave. They didn’t want me to leave, which is a good problem,” Okocha said.

The former Bolton Wanderers captain narrated a light-hearted moment when he nearly missed being addressed by his own adopted name on a flight, as he was not yet used to travelling with the Turkish document.

“The first day I was travelling with this passport, I sat down on my seat. So they were telling me, ‘Welcome Mr. Yahuz.’ I didn’t know I was the one they were talking to. I forgot my name,” he said.

Okocha said he eventually left Fenerbahçe for PSG in 1998 after a transfer saga that saw him briefly stop training to force the move through.

He said he still travels back to Turkey with the passport today, though he is mostly still called “JJ” by people who recognise him.

“Some sometimes they don’t even know. Some they don’t know that I’m the one,” he said.

Okocha spent two seasons in Turkey after joining Fenerbahçe from Eintracht Frankfurt, before completing a move to PSG for a fee reported at the time to be the most expensive paid for an African footballer.