Another footballer bites the dust

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The death has been announced of George Hassan,one of the early footballers of both the Shooting stars of Ibadan and Leventis United Football club.
According to his friend and club mate,international striker,Segun Odegbami,he died in the early hours of Saturday in his Moniya residence in Ibadan,Oyo state capital.

George Hassan with former Governor, Babatunde Fashola

Below is a tribute by Segun Odegbami:
God of Creation, what is going on?aA
Another one of us bites the dust!

As I was sending out my last broadcast on ‘Tale of two strikers’, I started to receive messages and calls from people I know and those I don’t, asking about the passage of yet another one of my generation of ex-international football players. The questions were numbing. I did not want to believe that another one of us has bitten the dust again, when we are still mourning Thompson Usiyan.

I am completely at a loss what to do or say.
I surely cannot start to pay another tribute to another great football great and colleague in both Shooting Stars FC and the national team, the Green Eagles.

George Hassan, the half-cast Lebanese-Nigerian football player, with the big afro hair, who at a time was referred to as the ‘Mercenary’ because of his endless transfers from club to club across the country in the years when he was one of the most influential defensive midfield players in the country, is reported to have died this afternoon.

George’s football story is the stuff of legend.

But now is not the time for his tribute, but for grieving the loss of another truly legendary football player whose place in Nigeria’s football history is also assured.

I have just learnt that he may have succumbed to the Covid-19 virus in Moniya, Ibadan, where he lived from the days he joined John Mastoroudes at Leventis United FC to build one of the pioneer semi-professional and most successful privately-owned clubs in the country, in the mid-1980s.

George Hassan Osaille was my team mate and close friend for most of the years that he spent with Shooting Stars FC and Leventis United FC, and many were our social escapades.

To even think that I can think and write about him a few minutes after hearing of his death, speaks of the ‘dehumanisation’ that we are all going through, with so many deaths of colleagues and friends around us.

‘What is going on, Creator of our Universe?
Please, hear our plea and halt these deaths.

I mourn you too in this season of mourning. Rest in Peace also, ‘Georgie Hassano’.

Olusegun Patrick Odegbami

 

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