…says Osimhen must break Yekini’s record to be considered greatest striker ever
After seeing Victor Osimhen overtake his record as the second highest goal scorer for the Nigeria National team, 1980 Africa Cup of Nations winner, Segun Odegbami, in an interview with Saturday Telegraph’s CHARLES OGUNDIYA said the Super Eagles’ forward is in the same mold as Manchester City’s Erling Haaland. Excerpts:
How do you feel seeing Osimhen surpass your record of 44 years?
It should have happened a long time ago. It just shows that the country has not been producing enough top strikers and probably they have not been staying long enough in the national team to be able to make the kind of impact that I made in five and a half years. That it has taken this long speaks to that deficit in our football development. But I’m also surprised because I thought that people like (Jude) Ighalo, (Martins) Obafemi, Yakubu (Aiyegbeni), people like that, should have overtaken me a long time ago. More so because I was not even a striker. I was playing from the wings and I didn’t play for too long at the time. So it is a most welcome development. Victor (Osimhen) has done it and he’s going to do more. I hope that he’s able to catch up with Rashidi (Yekini). Rashidi spent a long time in the national team, almost 14 years, to achieve what he did. Victor has started, he still has time on his hands to be able to do what Rashidi did.
Despite his injury history, Osimhen was able to get these number of goals for the national team. Will you call Osimhen one of the best Nigeria ever produced as a striker?
I don’t think we can start to say that now. Yes, he’s a goal poacher, he’s scoring goals. But definitely, in my lifetime, I have seen some truly exceptional strikers too, like the late Thompson Usiyen, who was a different kind of striker, who had some blind skills. You know from the spot he could pick his position and take a shot and you know, he was more of a team player and an all-round player than Osimhen. But Osimhen for me is the typical centre forward, the all dashing strong, fast, powerful, top centre forward, he’s like Haaland in England. That kind of centre forward. So in that regard, he’s extremely good. He still has a few more years, that’s whether he’s the very best or not. But for now, he still has to surpass the record of Rashidi Yekini.
We picked four points from our last two games against Rwanda and Zimbabwe, with Osimhen scoring all the goals, would you say he was the missing link in our previous four qualifiers where we picked just three points in four games?
Well, you know, of course, any team would want Osimhen in their midst. He delivered the final ball. So, yes, he was missed quite all right. Many of us believe that if he had been there, he would have scored one or two goals to make the difference. So he definitely adds value to what the Super Eagles are in front of goal, because when he has the opportunity, he’s more likely to bury it than not. So yes, he was missed in our last four games.
Talking about you, it was 45 years after you led the then Green Eagles to the first AFCON title for Nigeria. Would you say playing at home in front of a packed crowd helped the team or there was something special about that 1980 squad?
I played in two AFCONs and in both of them, I was the highest goal scorer. We could have won the 1978 AFCON in Ghana. We could actually have won that one because we had the team to win it. So, it was not a question of just the crowd. We got a bronze in Ethiopia, we got a bronze in Ghana. Very close bronze, before we won it in 1980. It is a well orchestrated thing. It was something that was coming, and then again we now played in front of our home crowd and at home, it helped tremendously, of course. But we had it coming all along.
It took 14 years to win another title in 1994. What do you think has been the major problem of the Super Eagles?
It’s not a problem. What do you mean problem? We cannot be winning it every time. Remember, there are 54 countries in Africa. And every one of them wants to win. And everyone, many of them have a very deep, if not deeper history of football than us. So, we are good to have recorded the number of AFCON we have won. We are good. Only two or three countries are ahead of us and that speaks volumes. So yes, it is not just to have the players, it is to have a team, it is to be lucky, it is, you know, so many factors come into play. It’s also to be playing away from home or at home, you know, so all of those things must come together to make you win. That’s why we could wait 14 years to win again and then a few years to win our third title in South Africa.
We are back to square one after a win and a draw in our last two World Cup qualifiers. Do you see the team getting the ticket from our group?
It is not going to be easy, it is possible. We just have to wait and see how the team evolves, how the team develops. Because winning one match or two is not everything. You have many, many more matches to play and the other teams also have to play poorly, you know, in one or two matches. So there’s a lot that comes into play when you want to determine which of them would qualify as a winner going to the World Cup. There’s still a long way to go beyond just playing and winning. So the starting point is to win all our games. And I tell you, that’s a huge mountain to climb.
You were part of the Military Games in Abuja, an event that’s about multiple sports, can you tell us your transition from football to all sports?
I am a sports consultant, I am not a football consultant. I am a sports consultant and for over eight years I was the chairman of one of the top basketball clubs in Nigeria. I have managed athletes before, I was an athlete’s manager. So, of course I am very very involved with all manner of sports. It’s not just football. I run a sports academy that is not a football academy. It is tennis, basketball, and so on and so forth, and track and field.
Talking about track and field, Chioma Ajunwa will always mention your name as the first person that supported and made her achieve that gold medal at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games. Can you please tell us the story?
I cannot tell the story. She had better tell the story herself. I actually managed four of them at that time. I had four athletes on that team. And two of them won gold and silver at the 1996 Olympics. Ajunwa won gold while Charity Opara won silver with the 4x400m relay team. I was an official IAAF (now WA) athlete representative. One of two Africans that were athlete representatives.
We have the new National Sports Commission. How do you think the Federal Government can make them function well?
They have given them the money and they have given them the freedom so they should function well. They have the freedom and they have the money. Nothing else needed.
One of the biggest problems we have been facing is transitioning from U-17, U-20, U-23 to the next level, which is the Super Eagles. How do we make this happen?
Well, you have to ask the technical people. I’m not qualified to answer that question at all. You have to ask those who are in the technical side of things.
You as a private individual, how do you think we can bring private sponsorship to boost sports in Nigeria like in other parts of the world?
That will take a true intellectual discourse. It is not a question and answer thing for even a few minutes on radio. A full intellectual discourse, something that should be researched properly by even a university to provide the answer. Not as simple as that now. There are so many things that need to work together. There are so many moving parts that need to work in harmony for us to be able to achieve that level of support from the corporate world to make sports a true business. It goes beyond just saying it. It has to be so many things falling into place and so on and so forth. So it’s a whole course of study.
Segun Odegbami International College and Sports Academy in Wasinmi, how has it impacted the lives of the young ones taking up sports and academy?
SOCA is just a unique secondary school that does what other regular secondary schools do and more, and much more than that. So we run our full academic programmes, but an intensive sports curriculum that requires between four and six hours of sports every day. So that is different and of course that is reflected in the graduates of the academy who are fully residential on campus who are on special diets and special trainings and who are like guinea pigs as a matter of fact, because so many institutions have come to study the impact of intensive sports on very young people, what is the impact physically, what is the impact intellectually, what is the impact on their health and so on and so forth. So SOCA is a laboratory and we are doing the unusual, what other schools are not doing. And we are producing products that other schools are not producing. Over 80 of our students that have graduated from the school have moved into higher education, either in the U.S. or in India on scholarships. Some are now professionals including Tolu Arokodare who is now in the Super Eagles team. We produce the unusual. Even without picking the most gifted of students, without enrolling the most gifted of students, how many students come into the school and by the time they are leaving they are not only bright, their sports talents would have been honed properly so that’s what the school is.
You moved from sports to become a journalist, now you have a radio station. How do you combine all these?
When I stopped playing football, the first thing I went into was media. I started without any training, I started to report. Within two years I had got to the U-17 world youth championship to report what happened in Scotland. And I became the Managing Editor of one of the foremost Sport papers in Nigeria, The Digest. I moved into television, worked in radio, television production, I have moved across the entire spectrum of the media, print and electronic. And now we are in a new media era of social media. And we are going into that as well. Sports encompasses everything in life. Sports is health, sports is education, sports is business, sports is the environment, sports is finance, sports is media. So once you can identify the connection between sports and other sectors, then of course you can become a player in that sector.
