Abiodun Baruwa

Global attention was focused on the Estadio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal on the night of January 29, 1997 when some of the world’s best footballers gathered in a contest between a selected Europe 11 versus Africa 11.

On parade for the Europeans were icons such as Edwin van der Sar, Zvonimir Boban, Frank and Ronald de Boer, Jurgen Klinsmann, Rui Costa, Pavel Nedved and Matthias Sammer while the Africa 11 was captained by Abedi Pele and had stars such as Taribo West, Mark Fish, Sunday Oliseh, Moussa Saïb, Tijani Babangida, and Mustapha Hadji among other greats. In goal for the Africans was Abiodun Baruwa, the only player still based in sub-sahara Africa at the time.

Africa won 2-1 on the night, via goals by Abedi Pele and Mustapha Hadji but, more importantly, a new star was unveiled that day as Baruwa, at only 23, went on to join the pantheon of Africa’s great goalkeepers.

Baruwa, in his teens, set himself the dream of playing for the national team and though he did not know how that dream was going to be realized, he pursued it with single-purpose determination fired by vision.

A proper Lagos boy, Baruwa was born into a prominent family on November 16, 1974 on Lagos Island. And just like every other kid on the block, he started football on the streets with his mates, kicking balls and playing impromptu football games to and fro his school.

At the Zumuratul Islamiyah primary school at Tinubu Square and even at Falomo  High School in Ikoyi Lagos, his undoubted ability stood out but it was at the famous Igbobi College, Yaba that a sign of the great goalkeeper he was to become in the future began to truly manifest.

At Igbobi, his paths first crossed with that of Joseph Dosu who was later to become his national teammate and rival for the nation’s number-one spot. The grounds for those future battles could be said to have been watered on the pitch of their alma-mater.

If the presence of Dosu helped Baruwa to raise his game, then joining Jidoze Babes was the fillip that opened his eyes to the demands of hardwork and sacrifice required if he was to succeed as a footballer. He was teammates with future Super Eagles captain Sunday Oliseh and older brother Churchill as well as ex-international Ganiyu Ajide.

Hear him: “At Jidoze Babes, we usually had the opportunity to play at the National Stadium before any major international games. We were giving 15-20 minutes spots to play a curtain raiser before the main game of the day and I guessed the mammoth crowds that always came to the stadium to watch games made me resolve that I must also play for the national team. One day, I usually dreamt, people will also come to watch me play at the stadium.”

For the youngster, it was a very easy resolution to make. It was easy to motivate himself to achieve his goal of playing for Nigeria because the mammoth crowd at the stadium was enough motivation.

Though the road ahead was strewn with challenges, Baruwa never took his eyes off the ball. He was with Jidoze Babes for three years and moved on to join Nigeria Airways 1998. He was soon on his way to National Bank and was part of the team which travelled to Dublin for an U-16 tournament.

Scouts were beginning to take note of the young but agile goalkeeper and in 1990, he got signed on by Stationery Stores of Lagos. He was a part of their FA Cup winning squad that year but, more importantly, that was the year his path crossed that of Ike Shorunmu who was already established as the club’s number one goalkeeper.

With Ike literarily pocketing the starting jersey and relegating the other goalkeepers to the substitutes bench, Baruwa knew he had to move on or else his career could be stalled. He moved up North to join Kano Pillars and narrowly missed winning another FA Cup gold medal as the Kano team lost the final of the 1991 edition to El-Kanemi. He played for one more year with Pillars before moving over to Iwuanyawu Nationale where he won the league in his only season with the Naze Millionaires in 1993.

In 1994, Baruwa crossed over to 3SC of Ibadan and that marked a turning point in his career as he was thrust into national consciousness because of his consistent performances.

Though 3SC failed to win any title in his first season but Baruwa, aged just 20, had done enough to merit a call-up to the national U-23 team which was preparing for the All-Africa Games in Harare, Zimbabwe.

He travelled to the All Africa Games and helped the country to a bronze-medal finish but came back to help 3SC win a league and cup double.

He was the club’s first-choice goalkeeper but because of his constant engagements with the national team, the club decided to sign another top-notch goalkeeper and Ike Shorunmu was brought in from Concord FC of Abeokuta so that, effectively, 3SC had arguably the two best goalkeepers in the country.

It is to the eternal credit of the two players that they maintained a very healthy rivalry which only helped the team to become the nation’s most successful team of the late 90s.

“Ike and I went back a long way. Don’t forget we were together at one time in Stationery Stores so there was no rivalry about who was the better keeper. He was always picked ahead of me at Stores and after I finished the 1994 season as 3SC’s number one, the club brought Ike to join me in 1995.

“However, both of us were so busy that when I’m with the U-23, he’ll be in goal for the club and by the time I came back he would also be away with the Super Eagles. On the occasions that we were both around at the same time, we wanted the team to win always so we both gave our best.

“Thinking about it now, I’m sure the time we spent together at the club at the same time was usually very short before we went on different national team assignments. By 1997, we were both in the Super Eagles and though he was playing in Europe, I had also become a top goalkeeper in Africa,” Baruwa explained.

If 1995 was the year of trophies and titles for Baruwa, 1996 was the year that heralded his presence to Africa and beyond. The 1995 league win meant 3SC were to campaign in the 1996 CAF African Champions Cup and Baruwa shone like a million stars as he kept out South Africa’s Orlando Pirates, Algeria’s JS Kabilye before the team narrowly lost to old foes Zamalek FC of Egypt on penalties after a 3-3 aggregate over two legs.

The same year, he helped the national U-23 team qualify for the Atlanta Olympics but a sad twist of fate would see him going to the competition as an alternate (standby) player despite being first-choice during the qualifiers.

Zimbabwe, defeated in the last leg of the qualifying series, protested and petitioned FIFA that Baruwa was born in 1969, not 1994 as he claimed, and thus was ineligible to play the qualifiers. It was a tensed period for the whole country as rumours were rife that Nigeria may be kicked out of the Olympics.

Baruwa recalls the saga: “We beat the Zimbabweans to qualify for the Olympics and we were supposed to be celebrating but the allegation came up that I was over-aged. We learnt some people sold the lie to the Zimbabweans but there was no truth to the allegation. They said they relied on a document which turned out to be false.

“It was a trying time for me as I was summoned to appear before a FIFA panel set up on the issue in Zurich. It was a trying time for me but the NFA was supportive. Because there was a lot of rumours and half-truths flying all around, I was kept in a hotel with guards standing at the door. I was not allowed to talk to the press so that I wasn’t misquoted and even denied the use of a telephone. It was crazy but at the end of the day we were absolved.”

However, on getting to the USA, further heartache awaited Baruwa. In the team’s first training, he got sick at the first training and didn’t recover in time before the deadline for submission of names so his name was penciled down as an alternate player despite the fact that he had played in virtually all the qualifying games.

Subsequently,despite having high hopes of being actively involved, Baruwa could only look on from the spectators’ stand as his teammates went on to conquer the world.

This setback notwithstanding, Baruwa ended the year on a high as he was named in the Africa 11 to face a select Europe 11 in Lisbon, Portugal early in 1997. This international recognition came out of the blues for Omo Alhaja, as he’s fondly called by admirers.
How did the invitation come about, especially for a player still based at home in the domestic league?

“Well, I cannot say definitively but obviously some people who mattered were following my progress both for the U-23 and 3SC in the Champions Cup. CAF sent a letter to NFA and I got a call from the NFA to break the news to me. I was overwhelmed but I kept my feet firmly on the ground, knowing fully well that it was a one-off game and a poor outing there could mar one’s reputation. It was a giddy feeling on the night that I was in goal opposite the great Edwin van der Sar and others who I’ve always read about in the newspapers.”

A fall-out of the All-Stars game was that Baruwa came back and walked into the Super Eagles team and faced the prospect of battling familiar foes Dosu Joseph, his teammates from Igbobi College and Ike Shorunmu from his days at Stationery Stores and, just before he left for Europe two years earlier, at 3SC.

Competition was fierce but fair and Baruwa was in fine form for club and country. He was in goal for most of the World Cup qualifiers for France ’98 but disaster struck after the team had secured the ticket to the Mundial.

In a pre-World Cup build-up game, he made an error which directly led to goal and many believed that this was responsible for why he lost a starting place in the team.

“It’s all good now so I can talk about it. I remember I was nursing a knee injury at the time but I was managing it. We played Yugoslavia two weeks before the World Cup kicked-off. I made a mistake which all great goalkeepers have made at one time or the other. I got a back-pass from my defender and as I was trying to control the ball with my leg, I was dispossessed and the striker went ahead to score.

“That was like 10 days to the World Cup and there was a big uproar in the country that I wasn’t experienced enough to be first-choice at the World Cup and, with Ike Shorunmu injured, they went and brought somebody else who had experience and had been to the World Cup before. That was how I lost my place in the team and was dropped to the bench. Though I didn’t get to play but I still made the World Cup squad so I can say I was there. No regrets at all.”

Baruwa got a move to Europe and signed with FC Sion but by the following summer he had moved to Austria to pitch his tent with Sturm Graz where he was until 2002. A nagging injury knocked him out of football for two years and he came back with English lower league side Dagenham & Redbridge in 2004. A year later he called time on his career after a stint with Hornchurch FC, also in England lower league.

He said: “Leaving football was the hardest decision I had to make. I had about three operations on my knees and was going for the fourth but my doctor advised against it, claiming there could be repercussions in future. It was hard for me to accept because I had no other job and the passion I had for the game was great but I had to listen to professional advice and I reluctantly left active football.”

Retired but not tired, Baruwa obtained both his coaching badge and a player agency licence in preparation for life in retirement.

“I was fortunate to have a very good agent who stood by me during my playing days and even when I was injured. He was my guardian angel. So when I retired from active football, I had the choice of either going into coaching or player agency but I want both. Call me greedy but I want it all. I got the coaching certificate as well as the player agency certification. This means I can do either of the two.”