Best Ogedegbe

Best Ogedegbe (born September 3, 1954 , † September 28, 2009 in Ibadan ) was a Nigerian football player .

Athletic career

Ogedegbe played most of his career as a football goalkeeper for Shooting Stars FC . With the club he won the Nigerian championship title and the national cup several times. The greatest success was winning the African Cup Winners' Cup in 1976, when the defending champions Tonnerre Yaoundé from Cameroon was defeated in the finals with a 4-1 home win in a 0-1 away defeat. He later moved to the Abiola Babes Abeokuta , where he ended his career in the mid-1980s.

Ogedegbe made his debut in 1979 in the Nigerian national team , in which he prevailed against Emmanuel Okalla and quickly established himself as a goalkeeper. By 1983 he played 31 international matches for the "Super Eagles". At the 1980 African Championship finals in Nigeria at home in March of that year, he guarded the goal of the selection, which won the title after a 3-0 win over Algeria with goals from Mudashiru Lawal and the two-time successful Segun Odegbami . In the summer he was also caught between the posts at the 1980 Summer Olympics, which were marked by the boycott of several Western countries, but as the bottom of the group, Nigeria was eliminated early. As part of qualifying for the 1982 World Cup finals , he played his last competitive games when Algeria retaliated for the final defeat in 1980 in the final play-off games and qualified for the tournament with a 2-0 home and 2-1 away win .

Ogedegbe later worked as a trainer and was involved in the youth sector for the Nigerian association. He died in September 2009 at the age of 55 from complications from eye surgery.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} goal.com: "Nigeria 1980 Nations Cup Hero Best Ogedegbe Dies After Complications From Eye Surgery"
2. ↑ rsssf.com: "Nigeria - Record International Players"