Google doodle on Monday celebrated a 60th posthumous birthday celebration of a former Super Eagles forward and football legend Rashidi Yekini npflupdates.com reports.
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Rashidi Yekini was born in Northern city of Kaduna on 23 October, 1963, twenty-two days after Nigeria got identified as a republic.
The lucrative striker, had a difficult life due to homelessness and poverty. Having football as his dream career, Yekini worked part-time as welder and mechanic to help his family make both ends meet.
However, with much dedication and talent, but with a less enabling environment, Rashidi was advised to go for football scouting programs; and soon he began playing in front of scouts.
Rashidi Yekini is Nigeria’s all time leading top goalscorer
Then in 1981, the former African Footballer of The Year, agreed to terms and joined his first football club ‘UNTL FC’ in Kaduna. He spent a short time in the Kaduna-based club before moving down South.
Down in the southwest of Nigeria, he joined a former Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL) champions, Shooting Stars where he scored an impressive number of 45 goals in 53 games.
In 1983, his spectacular football abilities earned him the ‘African Footballer of the Year’ title; hence becoming the first Nigerian player to receive the honour.
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In the following year of 1984, the lethal former AFCON winner, having played a very crucial role helped to bring his side Shooting Stars to the finals of the African Champions Cup.
Apart from his days in the Nigeria Premier Football League NPFL, Yekini also played for clubs in Spain, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Greece, Portugal, and Switzerland.
In the 1993-94 season, he won the Bola de Prata (Silver Ball) for being the league’s top-scoring player. Then he was playing for a Portuguese team called Vitória Setúbal.
With the Super Eagles he won the 1994 edition of the African Cup Of Nations (AFCON) in Tunisia.
Also, he helped Nigeria qualify for the 1994 World Cup hosted in the United States of America. At the world cup, he made history by scoring Nigeria’s first FIFA world cup goal.
Interestingly, after he scored the goal, he ran into the goal, andel clutched the net with both arms and was vigorously shaking it in joy as he murmur some sounds of joy.
Nigeria will go ahead to exit the world at the quarterfinals, after they lost to a star-studded Italian side.
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Yekini is regarded as Nigeria’s best striker of all time, and he holds the record of highest scoring player to ever play for the Super Eagles with over sixty goals to his name.
The football legend died on 4 May 2102
