His fight set to be moved
Not a flashy footballer, he was certainly as reliable a gunman as any football team could ask for, always at the right place, at the right time, whether the ball was pushed into his path on the ground, or floated into his zone in the air, to put away that chance, beat that goalkeeper and score that crucial goal.
MAYBE, to get a fair appreciation of how good he really was, we need a take a trip to Nigeria to find someone who probably played, and to some extent, scored like him.
And, in a way, probably lived like him.
In the shadows, far away from the spotlight, allergic – to some extent – to the glamour that comes with regular appearances on the back page headlines in the newspapers and the rock-star status that comes with presence on television programmes.
There, in the western state of Kwara, we will find the grave of one of Africa’s iconic football superstars.
Eight years have now passed, since he died in Ibadan.
But, his legacy still lives on and, in death more than in life, his true legend now appears to be better appreciated, and widely acknowledged.
Maybe, it’s because he was the old-fashioned type of football star, a guy who simply hated the spotlight, he even rejected several commercial offers, and branding opportunities, which would have made him a multi-millionaire.
But, Rashidi Yekini didn’t need television commercials, giant billboards and desktop spin doctors for him to acknowledged, and celebrated, as a genuine football superstar.
He simply needed to score goals, which he did with such regularity it became part of his DNA, a great goalscorer and a scorer of great goals.
This year, the Nigerians honoured him as their greatest goal-scorer ever and, given the football stars who have emerged from that country, it really illustrates how good Yekini really was. It’s also easy to understand why: ◆ He scored the Super Eagles first
goal at the World Cup finals.
◆ He was the leading goal-scorer, in the African qualifiers, for a place at the ‘94 World Cup finals with eight goals.
◆ He remains the all-time leading goal-scorer for the Super Eagles with 37 goals in 57 matches for his country.
◆ He remains one of just four African players to win the Golden Boot in a European league after his 21 goals during the 1993/1994 season for Victoria Setubal in Portugal.
◆ He is the first Nigerian to be named CAF Africa Footballer of the Year when he was handed that honour in 1993, opening the doors for the likes of Emmanuel Amunike (’94), Victor Ikpeba (’95) and Nwankwo Kanu in 1996 and 1999.
◆ He scored 13 goals in consecutive AFCON finals between 1990 and 1994, was the first runner-up in 1990 and then took the Golden Boot in 1992 and 1994, leading the Super Eagles to success in Tunis in 1994.
◆ He is Nigeria’s all-time highest
goal-scorer at the AFCON finals. ◆ Rashidi Yekini ensured he left his mark every competition he attended and the Africa Cup of Nations was one of the favourite competition.
◆ In four AFCON finals, his 13 goals made him the third all-time highest goal-scorer in the competition behind the legendary Laurent Pokou of Cote d’Ivoire (14 goals) and Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon (18).
◆ The 13 goals were enough to make him Nigeria’s highest goalscorer in the competition at least for now. ◆ In 114 games for Victoria Setubal, between 1990 and 1994, he scored 91 goals across all competition to make him the club’s greatest legend and the first Nigerian footballer to score over 90 goals for a single club. Yekini was just a few months short of his 49th birthday, when he died in March 2012, and there appears to a mysterious dark attachment, about the age 49, especially when it comes to great African goal-scorers.
Phil Masinga, the first South African to play in the English Premiership, who scored the decisive goal that powered Bafana Bafana to their first World Cup finals in 1998, succumbed to cancer in January last year.
The gangly former Leeds United forward, affectionately known as Chippa, was 49 at the time of his death.
Shacky Tauro, the greatest goalscorer of his generation who was a mere 20-year-old when he won the Soccer Star of the Year, after leading CAPS United to their first league championship in 1979, died on June 17, 2009.
Also known as Mr Goals, Bere or Chinyaride, he was 49, just 11 days short of his Golden Jubilee, at the time of his death.
But, this isn’t about Shacky, the sharp-shooting legend who was virtually unstoppable in front of goal, whose goals helped transform CAPS United into the Cup Kings of domestic football in the ‘80s, and powered the Warriors to their first regional trophy – the CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup in 1985.
It’s about another sharp-shooting marksman who, for one reason or another, doesn’t seem to get the recognition he richly deserves on the domestic front and, on the few occasions they mention his name, it’s almost like an afterthought, as if he wasn’t really good.
His name is Agent Sawu.
AN AGENT OF SUCCESS, A SIMPLE BOY FROM BULAWAYO
Agent turns 49 on October 24.
Because he defied what appeared to be insurmountable odds to touch the heavens, in his football career, he will certainly defy the Curse of 49, which has devoured many great goal-scorers. And, scorers of great goals. This question has always haunted me for years – what if Agent had played in an era where everything related to domestic football would be focused on a genius called Peter Ndlovu?
Would that have provided us with a better appreciation of the real quality of this footballer, this goal-scoring machine, this simple boy from the City of Kings who, for one reason or another, isn’t given the respect he richly deserves?
Would his name be constantly mentioned among the top five footballers, of his generation, every time fans, and even pundits, go down memory lane to remember a time, and an era, when the Warriors were the real deal?
When, against all odds, the Dream Team gatecrashed their way into the top 50 of the most powerful football-playing nations in the world which, for a country of just about 11 million back then, was simply an incredible success story.
The Dream Team soared as high as 40th in April 1995 and were ranked sixth on the continent.
For a country which had never qualified for the AFCON finals, back then, this was massive, representing a golden era in the history of the game here, and an acknowledgement of how football had grown in leaps and bounds here during those wild, and beautiful days, of the Dream Team.
Agent Sawu was a big part of that story.
The reliable target man whom Reinhard Fabisch trusted for goals, to provide the finishing touch to the move, once Benjamin Nkonjera had forced the turnover of possession in midfield, Peter Ndlovu had provided the thrust down the channel and the Warriors had fashioned a chance to score.
Not a flashy footballer, he was certainly as reliable a gunman as any football team could ask for, always at the right place, at the right time, whether the ball was pushed into his path on the ground, or floated into his zone in the air, to put away that chance, beat that goalkeeper and score that crucial goal.
It was easy, watching him for the first time, to question his athleticism, he didn’t look like the typical athlete, the traditional centre forward, for goodness sake, he wasn’t blessed with the height, which many of the top goal-scorers have used to their advantage to nod the goals home.
He wasn’t blessed with searing pace, which many of the top strikers have benefited from, to leave defenders trailing in their wake with that sudden burst of speed, which then helps them to find the space, and time, to try and beat the goalkeeper and score their goals.
He wasn’t blessed with dribbling wizardry, which someone like Vitalis Takawira, for instance, used to great effect, eliminating defenders with his quick feet, confusing them with his trickery, to score lots of goals while leading the Glamour Boys attack in the ‘90s.
And, he appeared a rugged one-legged gunslinger, take care of his left foot, and you were likely to have found a way to silence him and blunt his potency.
But, nothing could be further from the truth.
Like Stanley Matthews, England’s Wizard of the Dribble, the first Englishman to be crowned the European Footballer of the Year, defenders knew exactly what to expect from him, he would drop his shoulders to pretend as if he was cutting inside before, without breaking stride, he would drift outside.
But, even though they were armed with knowledge of his strength, and weapon, the defenders just could not stop him.
‘’His swerve was something which defied analysis, just as it defied attempts to counter it,’’ Brian Glanville, one of the icons of British sports journalism, wrote in February 2000, when Matthews died at the age of 85.
‘’He would take the ball up to the opposing left-back who, even if he were mentally prepared for it, would still ‘buy’ the dummy when Matthews swayed slightly to the left, putting the opponent off balance, only to wriggle round to the right, flick the ball up the touchline with the outside of his right foot, and sprint away.
‘’Catch him if you could.’’
This was typical Ajira, the defenders knew they had to stop that left foot, they were told that again and again in their pre-match meetings with their coaches but, somehow, they just couldn’t do it.
Sixty seven goals for Zimbabwe Saints in 84 matches, including being crowned Soccer Star of the Year in 1993, 28 goals in 36 games for FC Wil in Switzerland, and a scoring streak for the Dream Team, during the Warriors’ finest spell as a football side in the world, which simply defied logic.
And, all the time, doing it with humility, never sending a message he was sheer class.
THE YEKINI CONNECTION, WHICH, SHOWS HE WAS REALLY SPECIAL
Okay, we talked about Rashidi Yekini at first, we will talk about him again at the end, just to demonstrate how special Sawu was with his goal-scoring instincts.
During the 1994 World Cup qualifiers, Yekini topped the scoring chats in Africa by scoring eight goals to take the Super Eagles to their maiden appearance at the global football showcase.
Agent Sawu finished second in those qualifiers, with six goals, scoring more goals than Ivorian legend, Abdoulaye Traore, who retired from international duty having scored 50 goals in 88 appearances for the Elephants.
Traore scored five in that campaign, and so did Abdelhafid Tasfout, the leading goal-scorer of all-time for the Algerian Desert Foxes with 36 goals, who was his country’s best player in 1992, 1993 and 1994.
Hossam
Hassan, the leading goalscorer for the
Pharaohs of
Egypt with 69 goals in 169 appearances, ended with f our goals in that campaign, and so did Alphonse
Tchami, the
Cameroonian who was good enough to play for Boca Juniors and Kalusha Bwalya, who was voted the 12th best player in the World Footballer of the Year poll in 1996.
Aboubacar Titi Camara, who ended up playing for Liverpool, also ended with fewer goals, in that World Cup campaign, compared to Ajira.
And, more than anything else, it was his consistency that really caught the eye – a winner in the World Cup qualifier against Egypt in December 1992, a goal in the same qualifiers against Angola the following month, another goal against Togo, in the same qualifiers, a week later, a goal against Angola, in the same qualifiers, at the end of that month.
Then, he scored again against Egypt, in that match in Cairo, nullified by FIFA because of crowd trouble, and scored again against Cameroon, in the same World Cup qualifiers, scored against Mauritius, in an AFCON qualifier, scored against Guinea, in the same World Cup qualifiers.
And, he was still scoring for the Warriors by the turn of the millennium.
For many, his defining moment came on July 4, 1993, when Cameroon came to the National Sports Stadium for a sink-or-swim World Cup qualifier which the Warriors just needed to win, after a 0-3 defeat in Guinea, had ended their unbeaten run.
FIFA claim say there were 71 160 fans, inside the National Sports Stadium, the number of tickets which ZIFA sold for that match, and the game appeared staggering to a goalless draw until Sawu, timing his leap to perfection, found a way to head home the only goal with barely minutes left on the clock.
The explosion that greeted that goal is something I have never heard at the giant stadium and, it’s a shame that such a great footballer, can be treated as just another ordinary player, by a community he served with distinction, in which he proved, in more ways than one, to be our Rashidi Yekini.
All the time, remaining as a humble boy from Bulawayo.
To God Be The Glory!
Peace to the GEPA Chief, the Big Fish, George Norton and all the Chakariboys in the struggle.
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bruno, Bruno, Bruno, Bruno, Bruno, Bruno!
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