By Emma Njoku
Former Super Eagles’ coach, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde, has extolled the virtues of the late Alhaja Mulikat Balogun, wife of Nigeria’s most celebrated footballer, the late Teslim ‘Thunder’ Balogun, as the family commemorates the 27th anniversary of her demis in Lagos.
Onigbinde, who spoke in Ibadan, noted that the late Alhaja Mulikat motivated her late husband to become Nigeria’s greatest footballer and, indeed, the national hero that he became.
Onigbinde, who was Nigeria’s first football coach to handle the senior national team to the FIFA World Cup finals at Japan/Korea 2002, said in some of the matches he watched, ‘Thunder’ Balogun play in his active international days, his wife, Mulikat, took it as a ritual to encourage her husband to score goals in crucial matches before the kickoff of such games. He noted that such motivations enabled ‘Thunder’ Balogun to write his name in gold both nationally and even in the Diaspora.
“Thunder put extra efforts that distinguished him in all the games he played before his retirement from active football”, Onigbinde stated.
He said it’s on record that it was Madam Mulikat who ensured he returned to Nigeria to continue his football career when he first rejected the plea of the then Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to come and help the West Rovers FC win the Challenge Cup, the biggest football competition in the country at the time.
The former FIFA and CAF instructor disclosed that ‘Thunder’ Balogun, who was midway into his career in the English Soccer League at the time, was playing for the Queens Park Rangers Football Club in 1958.