Segun Odegbami at 74: The Legend on Love and Loss

At 17, Segun Odegbami had the hands of an artist and seemed destined for poetry, illustration and painting. Football changed that path completely, turning him into a household name across Africa and a celebrity whose factory visits could bring production to a halt for a day.

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People remind me constantly about my relationship with football on a daily basis to the extent that I look at most of life through the prism of football.

Now 74, the former football star describes life in its “evening.” The stadium noise has faded, and his body’s aches, minor health conditions and the deaths of colleagues have made mortality impossible to ignore. “There is no ‘whole lifetime ahead’ any more,” he says. His response is to stop postponing decisions, finish what needs to be done and look for positives and opportunities around him.

Football still provides the central lens through which he sees his life. It shaped his work, leisure, social engagements and projects. Even so, Odegbami says he spent too much of his youth enjoying life in ways that mattered less, rather than building a career early in a field that matched his natural gifts.

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There is no ‘whole lifetime ahead’ any more, as I used to think in my younger days.

He believes he should have become a fine artist, painting, writing poems and illustrating them. Instead, life before and after football kept drawing him back to the sport, while everyone around him identified him primarily as a footballer. It took time, he says, to discover that everything did not have to remain connected to football.

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I spent too much time ‘enjoying’ life in the least important ways, instead of building a solid career early in a field of my passion.