The last time I wrote about the matter I promised it would be the last time I would do so because I dislike the idea of ever telling anyone ‘but I told you so’. So, let me apologise for breaking that promise and writing once again about Samson Siasia and his decision to accept the job of handling Nigeria’s Under-20 team to the World Youth Championship going on in Egypt right now. I hated the idea of the Greek gift offered him by the NFF and told him so. I reminded him I was one of the first people to ever encourage him to become a coach because I saw that he had (since his playing days) all the basic qualities to become one of the first indigenous coaches truly qualified to lead the senior national team to any level.  I had worked every closely with their group from 1993 to 1994 and believed that some of them would make great coaches when they retired. Samson Siasia and Sunday Oliseh in particular caught my attention. I have since never hidden my love for Samson character and style. Through the past few years I have shared thoughts with him and expressed my opinion and concerns about his teams, all of which he appreciated. 

Samson’s rise through the ranks since 2004 has been a fairy tale to such an extent that he has become Nigeria’s first coach to be ranked amongst the world’s best by FIFA. He has been a true professional, acknowledging his weak points and hiring the necessary human expertise to complement his work. Before Egypt 2009, with time on his side, a lot of self effort and plenty of luck he succeeded in producing a technical team around him that produced winning national teams. I led a group of writers and other Nigerians to campaign for him to become senior national team coach. He came first in the interview conducted by the NFF to hire a Nigerian coach to lead Nigeria’s qualification for the World Cup. He should have been offered the job on the strength of that, but the NFF bosses thought differently. I did not like it one bit, but they offered him a Greek gift to rescue a junior team that was in disarray and he took the bait and swallowed it hook line and sinker! Meanwhile there was nothing more he needed to prove to anyone about his capabilities. He was not a hungry man willing to accept any offer as a lifeline and become a puppet in the hands of the bosses in the NFF. But he took the job and the consequences have been unfolding in a dramatic way in the past one week. By the time you are reading this Nigeria would have played her third match against Tahiti and won (I hope) very well, but that will be after two unfortunate losses that do not reflect Siasia’s true capability as a coach. 

The reality is that his credentials now attract fresh scrutiny and may now delay his rise to the position of Chief Coach of the national team. Now the job is no longer automatic to him. Should anything go more wrong than they have now done so far in Egypt he would have to go back the queue, make real a long list of expectations by Nigerians, go through one or two new foreign coaches, before he gets another chance to head the Nigerian team again. All because he took up this unnecessary job and ‘failed’. That is the price he has to pay for the taking one gamble too many, for disrespecting the game of football and thinking his coaching skills are enough to tame football with its endless number of unpredictable factors that make or break a team.  

I am writing this simply to join with many other Nigerians in praying that the national team somehow escapes the humiliation that looms after two matches, and somehow finds the strength and favourable luck to make a comeback in the championship and rescue the career of one of the greatest indigenous coaches of this generation!   

Tribute to Layiwola Olagbemiro

These are indeed sad times in Nigerian football. And I am not referring to the several poor performances of the different national teams that characterise the state of Nigerian football at the country’s 49^th Independence anniversary. There is the case of the passage of one of us several weeks ago. I had received a phone call from a friend informing me that in far way India, Layiwola Olagbemiro had passed away on a surgeon’s table. Layiwola aka Papalasco had travelled to India to take care of his failing health only for him not to return alive. He was one of those whose success in football and in life actually led me down the path of football. Although he was several years older I knew him as far back as I can remember. Everyone that grew up in Jos in the 1960s knew him. In primary school he was the leader of his school’s marching band. So good was he at conducting his group and displaying his skills with the mace that we thought he could easily have made a career out of it in any of the armed forces. Every year at the Independence celebrations at the Jos Township stadium, Layiwola was the cynosure of attention in his immaculately clean, well ironed navy-blue and white uniform, well-polished black shoes and his swinging conductor’s stick! His father was a rich merchant in Jos and he lived big to the envy of all his counterparts. We all wanted to be like him. Layiwola carried himself with dignity and became so well respected in the Jos environment that he could have been almost anything he wanted to be. Even the creation of States did not diminish his influence. Even as a Yoruba man he rose to become team manager and Chairman of JIB and Mighty Jets Football Clubs, and representative of the State on the board of the Nigeria Football Association. Layiwola played for Plateau Highlanders and later Mighty Jets of Jos through the years of the clubs’ greatest glory. He played for the Green Eagles a couple of times before he retired from football. He played from the left flank and was extremely fast and deadly with his left foot. He eventually left Jos a few years ago to settle in his home town of Ogbomosho where he became Chairman of Crown Football Club, the second State-sponsored team in Oyo State.

Layiwola was buried three weeks ago whilst I was in Egypt for a CAF committee meeting! I use this opportunity to add my sincere condolences to those of millions of other Nigerians and pray that his family will find the strength that comes from the throne of Grace to bear his loss!

I remember Chief Layiwola Olagbemiro very fondly.

Simply the Best of his generation!

This is not a tribute. That will come at a more appropriate forum, by the grace of God, when all generations of Nigerian footballers particularly members of the 1980 Green Eagles will honour him. This is simply a summary of the life of Best Ogedegbe who passed on this week in Ibadan under circumstances that confirm our mortality, indicate how fragile our time here in earth is, and tell us how grateful we should always all be to our creator for making us survive the turbulences of life in Nigeria.   

I am confronted with the sad loss this past week of my personal friend and team mate in Shooting Stars and the Green Eagles. It was ‘Master’ that called me late one night early this week and told me Bestila (as I called him) was in hospital undergoing an eye operation. ‘Master’ is Mr. Adelagun, the younger brother to the late proprietor of Adelagun Memorial Grammar School, who, in 1973, went to Lagos and, from Eko Boy’s High school, recruited Best and a few other players into his school’s football team. That year Best lost his father and it fell on Master to take up the role of father, teacher, games master, manager and friend. Best and Mr. Adelagun remained very close until Best’s death. Master was always looking out for his interest and Best would also always support him through tough times! Through Master I kept abreast of Best’s progress since we both retired from the game.

From school Best joined Spitfire Football Club, a collection of academicals in Ibadan under the tutelage of late Pa Ayo Adeniji. The team was a feeder team to the great clubs in Ibadan at the time. It is from Spitfire that Best was recruited to Shooting Stars late in 1975 when the team qualified to represent Nigeria at the following year’s Africa Cup winners Cup!  

Best was 21 at the time and was the youngest of the three goalkeepers in the Shooting Stars team. The other two were Zion Ogunfeyimi, and Amusa Adisa. So confident was Best in goal that many people misinterpreted it for arrogance. Best believed he was the best. It was written all over him in the way he kept goal and in his poise in goal. He was Nigerian football’s Mohammed Ali, loquacious and boastful, hitting his chest and shouting at the top of his voice even during matches against opposing attackers that no one could score against him. That apart, he was indeed very good. He infected his defence all the time with his arrogant display of uncommon confidence! He was young but had the heart of a senior. Every training session was a contest between him and strikers. I also believe his goalkeeping prowess derived from his ability as a field player. He was an exceptionally gifted striker. Once when the Green Eagles had a problem of a striker Otto Gloria toyed with the idea of using Best for one of the friendly matches as his top striker.  

Best Ogedegbe infected every coach he ever played under with his confidence so much so that he was often chosen after a short spell ahead of the legends before him. That’s why he kept goal for Shooting Stars through the last matches of the 1976 Africa Cup winners Cup matches won by the team. That’s why he displaced legendary Emmanuel Okala on the eve of the 1980 African Cup of Nations.

Best left Shooting Stars with Muda Lawal and Rashidi Yekini to play briefly for the great Abiola Babes Football Club of Abeokuta before retiring from the game. He hung around Ibadan after that for a short spell before moving to London where he sojourned for a few years. On his return to the country he returned to coaching and has worked silently and with dignity with a few clubs and one of the junior national teams.

Best who lost him Mum a few years ago lived in the outskirts of Ibadan with his beautiful wife, Shade who has stood beside him through almost three decades like a pillar, and their two surviving daughters. Best Ogedegbe, MON, will be laid to rest finally in Ibadan where he spent most of his life between October 15 and 16, 2009, according to the family. May his soul find peace with his Creator!              

segunodegbami@hotmail.com