That Tosin Adebambo was going to take football as a career was not in doubt considering the fact that he was born, and grew up, in the Ososami area of Oke Ado in Ibadan, a stone throw from the famous Liberty Stadium (now re-named Obafemi Awolowo Stadium) and he got to cross paths with a good number of football stars of the early 1970s who played for the then IICC and the motley of clubs in the then capital of Western Nigeria. He saw them train and play and wanted to be like them.
Like any other kid of his time, he started football on the streets and was involved in all the youth competitions that were the order of the day but his life’s course was to take a different trajectory from those of his peers. It was always going to be education and football or football and education, not one without the other.
It could be argued that he would have been a greater player than he was if school had not limited his involvement in football. He said: “It was a course I chose myself and I’m better for it today. The first club I played for was CRIN – (Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria) FC while I was still in secondary school at Prospect High School in 1980. My teammates at the time included Dimeji Lawal and Mutiu Adepoju, both of whom went ahead to represent Nigeria at junior and senior levels. We won the Olubadan Cup title for the club in 1980 and I can say that was the beginning of many honours in my career.”
After wrapping up his School Certificate in 1981, Adebambo immediately went to Ibadan Grammar School, another institution with sporting pedigree, to enroll for his Higher School Certificate (HSC). It was at IGS that scouts started taking another look at the sturdy Tosin who was a rock in the defence as the school went on to record an unprecedented ‘treble’ of Principal’s Cup, Lekan Are Cup, and Aoinas Cup in 1982. The Principal’s Cup was the competition of choice for secondary schools in Nigeria at the time while the Lekan Are Cup and Aoinas Cup were also highly regarded school competitions in Oyo state.
Watching, as others were, was the coaching crew of IICC Shhoting Stars of Ibadan, the team which was the dream of every aspiring footballer at the time. Towards the tail-end of the 1981 football season, there was a mass exodus of players with late Best Ogedegbe and Muda Lawal leaving for Abiola Babes FC of Abeokuta while John Orlando went to Julius Berger of Lagos. Idowu Otubusin and Philip Boamah decided to call time on their careers so there was a need to bring in new players to replace the departed ones. When IICC called, you cannot refuse.
Adebambo recalls what became his break into big time football even as a student: “Because of our sheer dominance of the Principal’s Cup in Oyo State, late Coach Sam Ojebode invited me for trials with the club and within the first three weeks of intensive training, I was able to break into the first team as a reserve player. This was at a time when Shooting Stars had legends such as Segun Odegbami, Felix Owolabi, Moses Otolorin, Idowu Otubusin, late Muda Lawal, late Best Ogedegbe, late Tunde Bamidele, Taiwo Ogunjobi, and Philip Boamah just to mention a few so it wasn’t as if I just strolled into the team. I worked hard and was also well received by the senior players who made all the younger players welcome.”
He made it to the first team in three weeks and his baptism of fire into ‘big time football’ came just a month after joining the team. It was during an international friendly match with India Railways FC as a substitute for John Orlando but that was the last time he was on the bench until he left the club in 1986.
Some of the schoolboys who were recruited at the time – Wasiu Adebayo , Seun Asagidigbi, Biodun Akintola etc who were just fresh out of school – meshed beautifully with some veteran players like Felix Owolabi, Ogbein Fawole,Taiwo Ogunjobi and Adegoke Adelabu for the 1983 National League.
This group of untested schoolboys, under the tutelage of coach Niyi Akande, defied conventional wisdom by going on to win the national league title that season and earned qualification to represent Nigeria in the 1984 African Cup of Champions (now CAF Champions League).
In the process, players like late Rasheed Yekini, Wakilu Oyenuga and Olumide Banjo were also brought into the fold. The team went all the way to the final before losing to Zamalek FC of Egypt in a fixture made famous by defender Ogbein Fawole’s own-goal in the decisive second leg.
By the end of 1983, in-between grueling trainings and constant travellings, Adebambo was through with his HSC and was able to secure admission to the prestigious University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University). Again, at Ife, he was a part of the great teams which won gold medals in the football event of at the 1984 and 1986 NUGA games in Ife and University of Ibadan respectively. They also won the 1987 Pepsi Cup for tertiary institutions and qualified to represent Nigeria at the World University Games in Zagreb, formally Yugoslavia.
The great Ife team had other outstanding players like Victor Ezekwesili, Nosa Osadolor, Wasiu Adebayo (who was Tosin’s teammate at IGS, IICC, Stationery Stores and at the Alabama A&M University in the United States).
Tosin had the best and worst moments of his career with IICC, the club for which his heart still beats passionately.
“My most memorable moments were in the 1983 season as we marched from one game to the other on the way to winning the National league when nobody gave us a chance. And my worst moment was when we lost to Zamalek of Egypt in the 1984 African Champions Cup final. These are moments I’ll never forget.”
By 1987, Adebambo moved to Stationery Stores and, in the eyes of the vociferous IICC supporters, this was a betrayal due to the rivalry between both clubs at the time. It was tantamount to a player leaving Liverpool for Manchester United or from Barcelona to Real Madrid. It happens but the furore it usually generates is better imagined.
In his defence, Adebambo said: “Wasiu Adebayo and I were at Ibadan Grammar School in 1982, when the management of the club came to plead with us to come and play for them. They’d just experienced mass exodus of their star players and the so-called school boys came and won the league for them in 1983 and a continental berth in Africa. After the ill-fated final against Zamalek of Egypt, the then governor took a knee-jerk decision by disbanding the team. He later rescinded that decision by asking every player to re-apply again but due to maladministration and misplacement of funds, the Club was relegated in 1986. Again, the student-players were blamed for this, that we did not give our best possible. They conveniently forgot that we were students when we won all those honours for them. So that was the last straw for me and, in looking for a change of enviroment and greener pastures, Wasiu and I ended in Super stores of Lagos. You could say why Stores and I will also say why not Stores? We were not the first players to cross over and definitely we were not the last. We moved for football reasons. Nothing more.”
The romance with Stores was not long as Adebambo was soon on his way out of the country, still in pursuit of academic excellence. He berthed at the Alabama A&M University, famous for its rich academic and sporting pedigree. Naturally, he played for the school until he graduated and went to acquire his coaching badges.
Today, he’s educationally sound and professionally qualified as a coach but it is apt to say his academics, not a lack of talent, debarred him from playing for Nigeria at any level.
He said: “Throughout my playing days in Nigeria, I was one of the very few players that could be tagged student-players; that was playing soccer at national and International level but still doing full time schooling at the same time. Right from 1980 when late Father Tiko and late Sam Ojebode were handling the Flying Eagles, I was invited to the team alongside players like Stephen Keshi , Henry Nwosu , Humphrey Edobor, Lukman Osun, Adegoke Adelabu, Bala Ali, Sunday Daniel, Franklin Howard etc but my stay in the national camp was always very brief due to overlapping academic commitments to tend to. Also when Coach Alabi Aissien and Professor Eto Amaechina were handling the national team (Green Eagles), I was among the few players selected from Shooting stars and when chief coach Onigbinde doubled as Eagles and IICC coach, I was also invited but because of the intense academic calendar that overlapped with training schedule, I could not honour the invitations. I also recall that while playing for Super Stores of Lagos in 1987, an invitation to report to the Eagles camp was also extended to me by Coaches Ganiyu Salami and Paul Hamilton. I was in the camp for almost two months because Universities were not in session at the time but I never played a competitive game for Nigeria.”
Ask him if he has any regret about the missed opportunities to announce himself on the international stage in the green and white of Nigeria and you get an emphatic no from the man fondly called Bambuzza.
“No regrets at all. I’d always been a student in high school or university throughout my playing days in Nigeria so it was not that I wasted the time that I should have been in the national team. I was using it to do something worthwhile to develop myself and I’m reaping the fruits of that sacrifice today. Above all, I had the rare priviledge of playing with and against some of the best players Nigeria ever produced. Same thing when I played on the continent with IICC in the Cup of Champions. What more can I ask for? No regrets at all.”
Adebambo left the shores of this country over a quarter of a century ago but he still keeps abreast of development at home, particularly in football, and is sad at the state of the game in Nigeria following Nigeria’s inability of the Super Eagles to qualify for the African Nations Cup scheduled to hold in Equatorial Guinea in January 2015.
He tries to proffer solutions and, not surprising for someone who made it through academics, he wants the administrators to take the game back to schools.
“We must go back to the basics. The game has to go back to the grassroots. In those days, you had to go through every rudimentary aspect of the game through the various levels. You play from secondary schools to State Academicals, before having a chance to play for the junior teams and then Green Eagles. We still have a lot of administrators who could set these programmes in motion and then we have to infuse lots of capital into sport so that we don’t lose a good chunk of our manpower (good players) to foreign countries. Charity, they say, begins at home. If we can produce a standardised and qualitative professional league at par with European leagues, then the crowd will flock back to the stadium. It is very possible.”
COMMENTS