Will Musona raise the Ba?

undertaken by Demba Ba, four years ago, which gave the Senegalese forward a springboard to leap into the riches of the English Premiership.
Musona finally waved goodbye to Super Diski yesterday, after signing a five-year deal to join Hoffenheim, an ambitious team that was playing Division Five football, just 11 years ago, before German businessman Dietmar Hopp transformed the club into a Bundesliga force.

But will Musona follow in Ba’s footsteps and eventually land a dream deal with a club in the English Premiership?
What really are the similarities between the paths taken by the two players?
Ba, the 26-year-old Senegalese forward, signed for Newcastle United this month, on a three-year deal, switching from West Ham, the club he had joined in January this year from Hoffenheim.

The gangly Senegalese forward, who top-scored at West Ham last season, in a vain battle to save them from relegation from the English Premiership, was 22 when he moved from Belgian club RE Mouscron to Hoffenheim in the summer of 2007.
Musona, the lanky Zimbabwean hotshot who top-scored for Kaizer Chiefs in a vain battle to win the South African Premiership for the Amakhosi, is moving to Hoffenheim at the age of 21 years, one month, seven days.

Ba was signed for 3 million euro, when he moved from Belgium to Germany, while Musona is believed to have signed for around 2 million euro in his mega move from Super Diski to the Bundesliga.
Interestingly, Ba wore the number 21 jersey at West Ham, the same jersey number that was used by Musona during his entire spell at Kaizer Chiefs.
Ba has three international goals, for the Teranga Lions of Senegal, in 10 competitive matches, while Musona has three international goals, in three competitive matches, for the Warriors.
Ironically, Ba did not play in the Senegalese Premiership, having been born in Severes, a suburb of Paris, in France, to immigrants from Senegal where he was one of a large family of eight children.

Musona, too, did not play in the Zimbabwe Premiership, having signed straight from Division One side Aces Youth Academy, into the ranks of the Amakhosi who gave him a platform to make a name for himself.
Ba started at a youth club in Montgaillard, in France, in 1992 and, while studying in Saint-Valery-enCaux, he featured for Porte Autonome between 1998 and 2000 before joining Frileuse between 2000 and 2001.
A move to Chatillon followed, after a family relocation, and he joined Montrouge in 2001 and stayed there until 2004, the year he decided that his future lay in football.

After unsuccessful trials at giants Olympic Lyon and AJ Auxerre, he joined English side Watford briefly, before returning to France in March 2005 and then joining Belgian side Mouscron, the following year, and seven goals in nine matches, after coming back from serious injury, attracted the attention of Hoffenheim.
He joined the German side in August 2007.

Interestingly, Musona was troubled by injuries in the past season, missing a key part of Chiefs’ campaign and also missing the Warriors’ Nations Cup qualifier in Mali, but his 15 goals for the Amakhosi gave him the Golden Boot.
Crucially, it also attracted the interests of Hoffenheim.

But will Musona emulate Ba and use Hoffenheim as a springboard for a leap into the English Premiership one day?
The Zimbabwean clearly has a tough task to follow the Senegalese star’s act, with Ba having scored 40 goals in 103 appearances for the German club during his three-and-half years at the team.

Ba would have joined Bundesliga side Wolfsburg but the deal collapsed, when he failed a medical, which was to haunt him again when he tried to join Stoke City, in the English Premiership, before he signed for West Ham.

The failed medical was related to the serious injury he suffered during the 2006/2007 season, which left him out of action for eight months, while he was still playing in Belgium.
Ba scored seven league goals, in 12 appearances, in an impressive spell for West Ham as the Hammers battled, and ultimately failed, to survive the chop from the English Premiership last season.
While the Hammers nose-dived into Division One, Ba retained his Premiership status after Newcastle United gave him a home for the next three years.

Ba, just like Musona, has turned into a very influential player for his country in the 2012 Nations Cup qualifiers and scored the priceless goal that gave Senegal a 1-0 win over Cameroon in Dakar in March.
Musona has scored all the three goals for his country in the 2012 Nations Cup qualifiers, finding the target in the 1-1 draw against Liberia in Monrovia and scoring twice, including a dramatic winner, in the 2-1 victory over Mali at Rufaro last month.

The Zimbabwean hotshot will not be short of African company at Hoffeinheim as the club also have 25-year-old Nigerian striker, Chinedu Obasi, who has been on their books since August 2007.
Obasi was one of the few Nigerian players to leave the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa after having made an impression.

Ghanaian striker Prince Tagoe, who played all three group matches for the Black Stars at the 2010 World Cup, could also return to Hoffenheim after spending the last six months of the season at Serbian club FK Partisan on loan.

Tagoe’s move to Hoffenheim in June 2009 suffered a setback when the striker’s contract was nullified, after just 51 days, with the German club claiming that he had a serious heart condition.
The player’s lawyers challenged the dismissal and, after a second medical report showed no signs of cardiac defect, Tagoe was cleared in January 2010 to play for Hoffenheim.
Ghanaian defender Isaac Vorsah also plays for Hoffenheim.

Musona’s rise into the best Zimbabwean footballer of his generation has, inevitably, triggered debate as to whether he is the finest star to emerge on the local scene since a teenage Peter Ndlovu took the domestic Premiership by storm in 1990.

The following season, an 18-year-old Peter moved from Highlanders to English Premiership side Coventry City where he made a big mark and, at the peak of his career, was dubbed by the British media to be as good as legendary Irish star George Best.

Today the focus is on Musona, whose movement to the Bundesliga will give the German league thousands of more Zimbabwean viewers, from this season, drawn by the magic of the Smiling Assassin and the mystery to see if their golden boy will make the grade in one of the four best leagues in the world.

If Musona, who showed against the Malians that he can stand his ground when playing against tough defenders different from the lightweights found in Super Diski, can produce his form at Hoffenheim, he could – just like Ba before him – use the club as a springboard to leap into the English Premiership.