A former Golden Eaglets coach, Sebastine Brodericks-Imasuen, who led the Eaglets to win the inaugural U-17 World Cup in 1985 is dead.
The late football coach who has
been on life support for over a year breathed his last at the University of
Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City, Edo State.
Brodericks-Imasuen, 85, had
been diagnosed with Ischemic stroke in December 2022 and had been receiving
treatment before he took his last breath, our correspondent gathered.
Ischemic stroke occurs when a
blood clot blocks or narrows an artery leading to the brain. The blood clot
often forms in arteries damaged by the buildup of plaques (atherosclerosis).
One of the players
Brodericks-Imasuen trained at the 1989 U17 World Cup in Scotland, Bamidele
Oguntuashe, first broke the news before another confirmation came from Harrison
Jalla, the Chairman, of the Professional Footballers Association of Nigeria
Task Force through a WhatsApp post.
Jalla quoted family sources for
the death of the iconic coach who had been bed-ridden for some months now.
He reportedly suffered from a
stroke and diabetes.
The late coach was one of the
football players who represented Nigeria at the Mexico Olympic Games in 1968
and famously scored from a free kick to win the then Challenge Cup for Bendel
Insurance in 1972.
As a coach, he was the head of
a three-man crew that included Bala Shamaki and Christian Chukwu when the
Nigerian team shocked the world in China in 1985.
He led the team again in 1987
to Canada and got to the final before losing through a penalty shoot-out to the
then-Soviet Union.
At the third attempt in the
competition, his team lost to Saudi Arabia by a penalty kick in the
quarter-finals.
At another time, he was the
assistant to Clemens Westerhof in the Super Eagles.
He began his football career in
1956 when as a student, he featured for the Onitsha team in the Challenge Cup.
In 1962, he joined the then ECN
and was part of the Challenge Cup winning side of 1965.
He was invited to the national
team in 1962 but only became a regular in the build-up to the 1968 Olympic
Games in Mexico.
He was noted for his curving
shots, especially from free-kick situations.
Popularly called ‘Sabara’, his
biggest moment as a club player was when he scored the winning goal in the 3-2
victory for Bendel Insurance in the replay of the 1972 Challenge Cup with
Mighty Jets of Jos at the Liberty Stadium – the first time the national cup
final was held outside Lagos.
He later became a coach and
handled the Midwest junior side to win a gold medal at the inaugural National
Sports Festival in 1973.
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