QATAR 2022 has come and gone. But it has left behind in its wake different impressions on the minds of soccer loving people all over the world. One of them is the man everyone calls Mathematical Odegbami. Segun Odegbami is a big name in the world of football. He is a living legend, having played for Green Eagles in those good old days before he retired from active football.
He became disillusioned with football when he and his team mates failed to win the African Clubs Championship in 1984. He had sustained an injury at the semi-final stage and was clearly not fit to play the final match. With the doctors’ help, he managed to play. He was one hundred percent unfit. Nigeria lost the game. Segun Odegbami lost the will and desire to continue playing football. And this particular moment gradually drew the curtains on his illustrious football career.
Though he no longer plays football he doesn’t miss his daily dosage of Tennis whenever he is be it in his base in Abeokuta or Lagos. He today runs a Sports Radio. He also owns a Fooball Academy in Wasimi, village in Abeokuta. He writes a weekly column and presents programmes on both TV and radio. And so good is he that his views on football and sports generally are well respected.
He was one of those who watched many of the World Cup matches. A few days ago City People spent som quality time with this living legend over lunch. We wanted to know his impressions of the just concluded Worldcup tournaments in Quatar.
How does he see the tournament? What are his take aways, we asked.
“Generally, it was a unique World Cup in a lot of ways. Even the country that hosted it is a tiny country, the smallest country in the Middle East, going by the size, the smallest we have ever had in the World Cup history. The population is small. The smallest population we have also had hosting such an event. And the process, of even bdiding to host it, because of the nature of the country and the geography of the country, now created all these allegations of corruption, the worst that the world has had since when it comes to bidding and hosting the World Cup because to most people, it is not rationale for such a small country to get the bidding right of the World Cup, that had America is one of the contestants. But at the end of it, we now found out that there was a lot of sleaze, exchange of monies, corrupt practices to get Quarter. Those were the allegations to get Qatar to host the World Cup, can a city host such a huge Championship? How will this work, the modalities for movement of people within such a small environment. They had 8 football pitches, each one minimum of 45,000 capacity in a country of such a small population, even though there was an anticipated inflex of One million people. But how will it work? How will transportation be done? How will people be moving from one stadia to another.
It provided the basis for grave concern, before the World Cup started. Having said that Quatar is a very rich country, and though the years of preparing to host the championship, we have been aware of so many things. They turned the whole country into a huge construction site. Immigrants came from several parts of the world to work in Quatar and there are stories of abuses.
So, the World Cup was truly unique in a lot of ways. And so it attracted a lot of issues that made it difficult to determine what kind of a World Cup it will be before it started.
But lo and behold the World Cup as soon as the first ball was kicked, as soon as the first guest arrived in Quatar, what they saw from Start to the End of it has now become some kind of record, historically because some people even say it is the best organised World Cup ever, because it was so in one place. You could do so many things, you could do everything, around the same environment. You had all the freedom you could get in other places. They were provided in their own doses, without offending the laws of the country hosting it.
So, in the end, well some people say it is the best World Cup that we have ever seen, in terms of the quality of the Organisation, the high quality of the stadia used, the facilities, the equipments, the coverage, everything was superb, as far as those who went there saw and experience. More than anything else, the football itself can only be measured in the climax of it. Although, there has been so many Shocks and Surprises and drama along the way, but when it came to that final match, without question, it was the most dramatic finals that the World Cup has ever had. It was like a movie script. An ordinary football match, for 80 minutes of the game, one side was dominating, it was going to be so boring and then suddenly all the action took place in 15 minutes. 15 minutes of everything Football could offer. Great football, controversy, dramatic goals, suspense, elongated game into extra time and finally it had to be settled by penalty kicks and the suspense of penalty kicks came up and the biggest characters involved, were the 2 biggest characters in the World of football. Lion Messi in Argentina and Mbappe in France. It had everything. So, at the end of it, days after the World Cup had ended, you could see jubilation all over the world. The countries that won, the countries that lost, everybody went back home and well comed their heroes to a good celebration and it is going on up till now.
So, it is a World Cup that is memorable, that went very well against the anticipated fears. Observing from my Wasimi residence, in Abeokuta, I thought it was a great festival. We were in Abeokuta, far from Qatar but we created our own Qatar in Abeokuta. For one whole month, it was a feast of celebration, celebrating the game, it was a feast of football, celebrating Qatar, celebrating the things that are beyond Football, that became apparent to people like us who were observing that beyond the game, Qatar now provided for us great advertisement for new possibilities, what you can use the World Cup for Qatar used the World Cup effectively, beyond getting their teams ready for the Championship, to develop their environment, to sell Qatar as the new Tourist hub in the world, to sell their Technology, to promote development in Qatar. Qatar has now become a household name, all over the World, it is the 1st and number 1 tourist destination in the World today. I hear of the tens and millions of people that were flooding there, now they have doubled the number.
So, you could see the power of the game, in action, of that competition, to touch humanity. This is where we have great interest in going forward.
