How is ex-Portsmouth player Yakubu getting on these days? | OneFootball

It is a long time since Yakubu last stepped onto the Fratton Park pitch to play a competitive match for Portsmouth.

Joining the club on loan from Maccabi Haifa in January 2003, the striker scored seven goals in 14 games to help Pompey secure promotion to the Premier League.

As a result, it is perhaps no surprise that the South Coast club then moved quickly to make his loan move permanent in the summer of 2003.

Yakubu then went onto spend the next two season with Portsmouth, scoring a further 36 goals in 78 games to help the club to 13th and 16th placed finishes in the top-flight of English football.

That was enough to tempt Middlesbrough to pay £7.5million for his signing in the summer of 2005, and over the next two years, he scored 35 times in 103 games for the club.

After that, Yakubu would move elsewhere in the Premier League, joining Everton in August 2007, spending the next three-and-a-half years at Goodison Park, netting 33 goals in 107 appearances.

With his time with Everton ending on loan in the Championship with Leicester, where he scored 11 times in 2o matches in the second half of the 2010/11 season, the striker sealed his permanent exit from the Toffees in August 2011, when he signed for Blackburn Rovers.

But despite scoring 18 goals in 33 games for Blackburn this season, he was unable to prevent the Ewood Park club suffering relegation from the Premier League.

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That would lead to Yakubu’s departure from the Premier League, as he headed to China to join Guangzhou R&F in June 2012, scoring 25 goals in 45 games for the club.

After a brief spell in Qatar with Al-Rayyan, Yakubu then returned to England to link up with Reading as a free agent in February 2015.

After scoring just one goal in 11 appearances, the striker was released by the Royals at the end of the season when his contract expired, prompting a move to Turkey with Kayserispor for the 2015/16 season, though three goals in 17 games was not enough to secure him an extended deal with the club.

Eventually, Yakubu would make one last return to England in February 2017, when he signed for Coventry on a free transfer.

However, injury restricted the Nigerian international – who scored 21 times in 57 games for his country in his career – to just three appearances for the Sky Blues.

As a result, the striker’s contract was terminated by mutual consent in April 2017, with the striker announcing his retirement in November of that same year.

But despite it being so long since his time at Fratton Park came to an end, Yakubu has clearly not forgotten his Portsmouth connections, visiting the club’s training ground earlier this week, to take part in a QandA and training session with the club’s academy.