OBITUARY
Fan 88235: Pope Francis honoured by hometown soccer team in Argentina
Argentina-born Pope Francis, who died on Monday, is being honoured at his local hometown soccer club in Buenos Aires, San Lorenzo de Almagro, where the football-loving head of the Roman Catholic Church remained a member during his 12-year papacy.
Fans from the first-tier Primera División club started gathering from Monday at the club’s chapel to the south-west of the Argentine capital to bid farewell to their best-known member.
“The pope leaves an unbreakable legacy,” San Lorenzo Club President Marcelo Moretti told Reuters. “For all San Lorenzo fans, he was a source of great pride. It is a very sad day.”
At the chapel, fans lit candles near a statue of Francis adorned with the team’s red and navy blue colours.
San Lorenzo fans took to social media on news of the pope’s death to point out that his club membership number – 88235N-0 – coincided exactly with his age and the time of death.
“He died at 88 years old, at 2:35 am (in Buenos Aires, 0535 GMT) and was member 88235. It really caught my attention,” wrote one San Lorenzo fan on X.
The club confirmed the pope’s membership number to Reuters.
A drone view shows the Pedro Bidegain stadium, home of San Lorenzo de Almagro, Pope Francis’ hometown soccer team, in Buenos Aires, Argentina April 21, 2025. REUTERS/Matias Baglietto
Special commemorative jerseys will be worn for Saturday’s match against Rosario Central, Moretti said, with players hoping to secure victory for the pontiff, whose funeral will be held in the Vatican on the same day.
Several other Argentine teams suspended matches on Monday as a mark of respect.
Oscar Lucchini, who runs the club’s chapel, showed Reuters old photos of Francis holding a San Lorenzo jersey as well as a print-out of his club membership card. Lucchini’s colleague Laura Magrino held up a team shirt made in honour of the pope.
‘GREAT EMOTION’
Moretti said he had met Francis several times, most recently last September, to ask permission to name a new stadium after him in the Boedo neighbourhood where the club is based.
“He accepted, with great emotion,” Moretti told Reuters.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio into an Italian migrant family in Buenos Aires in 1936, at a time when soccer had already become Argentina’s most popular sport, said author Jimmy Burns, biographer of ‘Francis: The Pope of Good Promise’.
Soccer was especially popular in less affluent neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires through clubs like San Lorenzo, which had been founded by a Catholic priest in 1908 and was Francis’ chosen team growing up.
The club became the 1946 champions, Moretti said, going on to secure several stunning victories during a European tour the following year, which brought the team international attention.
Francis became a lifelong soccer fan despite rarely playing himself in his younger days due to health issues.
“He tended to read rather than play sport,” Burns told Reuters, but he liked watching games live at San Lorenzo or catching the occasional World Cup match on TV.
After becoming pope in 2013, Francis never returned to Argentina, but he hosted many of the country’s sporting greats at the Vatican, including soccer icons Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona. Sport is a great leveller, Francis once said.
Maradona, who died in 2020, said Pope Francis had restored his Catholic faith after they met in 2014. Messi would later be granted a papal audience of his own, from which he said he also emerged spiritually refreshed.
-Reuters
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By Kunle Solaja.
Late Nigerian football tactician Adegboye Onigbinde left behind many legacies in the country’s game, but one of his most enduring contributions was the popular identity he gave to Shooting Stars Sports Club — the famous 3SC.
The former Nigeria national football team coach, who died on Monday at the age of 88, is widely credited with coining the abbreviation that has since become synonymous with the Ibadan-based club.
During his early years with the club, Onigbinde observed that the team’s name, Shooting Stars Sports Club, was often shortened in different ways in newspapers and football discussions. Seeking a simple and distinctive identity, he adopted the initials 3SC, representing the three words that make up the club’s name.
The abbreviation quickly gained acceptance among supporters, journalists and football administrators, eventually becoming the club’s official shorthand and a powerful brand in Nigerian football.
Over the years, the name 3SC has become inseparable from the club’s identity, appearing on jerseys, official documents and stadium chants from fans at the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan.
Shooting Stars is one of Nigeria’s most historic clubs and a dominant force during the golden era of Nigerian club football in the 1970s and 1980s. The team won several domestic titles and achieved continental glory when it lifted the African Cup Winners’ Cup in 1976 — becoming one of the earliest Nigerian clubs to win a major African trophy.
Onigbinde himself played a key role in shaping the club’s football philosophy and youth development culture during his association with the team.
Beyond club football, he later went on to coach the national team, guiding the then Green Eagles to the final of the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations and later leading Nigeria to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, where he became the first indigenous coach to take the country to the global tournament.
While his achievements with the national team are widely celebrated, many football followers also remember him for giving Shooting Stars a unique identity that has endured for decades.
Today, long after the coach first coined it, the simple abbreviation 3SC remains one of the most recognisable symbols in Nigerian club football — a reminder of Onigbinde’s lasting imprint on the game.
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By Kunle Solaja.
Another pall of grief descended on Nigeria’s sporting community on Monday night with the passing of veteran football tactician Adegboye Onigbinde, who died at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, just a short distance from his ancestral home in Modakeke, Osun State.
His death came amid a sombre period for Nigerian sport, following closely on the heels of the passing of Chamberlain Nnamdi Dunkwu as well as two respected sports journalists, Niyi Oyeleke and Tonex Chukwu.
For Onigbinde, football was not merely a profession—it was the defining passion of his adult life. Over several decades, he served the game in Nigeria and beyond as a coach, administrator and mentor, leaving an enduring imprint on the country’s football development.
In an interview with Sports Village Square in 2022, the late coach traced the turning point of his career to a chance encounter in the early 1960s with Nigeria’s legendary footballer Teslim Balogun.
Onigbinde regarded Balogun—popularly known as “Thunder”—as the greatest footballer Nigeria had ever produced.
According to him, it was Balogun who set him on the path to coaching.
“I was a Grade III teacher when he spotted me in Ife and advised me to take up football,” Onigbinde recalled. “Coincidentally, I went to Ibadan to do my Grade Two Teachers’ Course at St. Luke’s College in 1961 and became the captain of the team.”
Dateline: Liberty Stadium, Ibadan. 16 July 1961: Chief Onigbinde, arrowed, and the early generation of Nigerian coaches. On the far right is the legendary Tesilimi Balogun. On the far left is Moshe Jerry Beit haLevi, the Israeli national coach of Nigeria.
That moment would prove decisive.
At the time, Balogun, working alongside the national team coach Moshe-Jerry Beit haLevi, organised a Grade B coaching course under the Western Regional Council of the Nigeria Football Association.
The course took place at the iconic Liberty Stadium—now known as Obafemi Awolowo Stadium—from June 26 to July 16, 1961.
Among those trained were several individuals who would later shape Nigerian football, including Onigbinde, Niyi Akande, Ayo Adeniji and Godwin Etemeke.
Onigbinde continued his professional development years later when he participated in another coaching programme organised by Balogun in March 1969. Among the participants in that course was Yinka Okeowo, who would later serve as secretary of the Nigeria Football Association.
With those formative experiences, Onigbinde found his lifelong vocation.
He began coaching in the then Western Region, travelling from school to school and from town to town to impart football knowledge to young players.
His early club career included managing the now-defunct Water Corporation FC of Ibadan before he rose to prominence with Shooting Stars Sports Club, one of Nigeria’s most historic clubs.
Under his guidance, the Ibadan-based side reached the final of the 1984 African Cup of Champions Clubs, a major milestone in the club’s continental journey.
The same year, Onigbinde also led the national team—then known as the Green Eagles—to the final of the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations, where Nigeria finished runners-up.
His career later extended beyond Nigeria’s borders. In the early 2000s, he worked as a technical instructor and youth coach with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association, helping to develop the country’s under-17 programme.
He left that position in late 2001 after assembling a promising youth squad that competed against local professional teams.
Shortly afterwards, he returned to Nigeria to take charge of the national team and led the Nigeria national football team to the 2002 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first indigenous coach to guide the country to the global tournament.
Beyond trophies and statistics, colleagues and players remember Onigbinde as a disciplinarian, a thinker and a committed teacher of the game.
For a man whose journey began as a classroom teacher and was transformed by a chance encounter with a football legend, his life story became inseparable from the development of Nigerian football itself.
With his passing, Nigerian sport loses not only a pioneer coach but also a living bridge to an earlier era when the foundations of the country’s football culture were being laid.
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Former head coach of Nigeria’s national football team, Adegboye Onigbinde, is dead. He passed away late Monday evening, four days after celebrating his 88th birthday.
His death was confirmed in a statement issued on behalf of the family by Mrs Bolade Adesuyi, who disclosed that the veteran football tactician had been ill for some time.
Onigbinde, one of Nigeria’s most respected football administrators and coaches, first took charge of the national team in 1983, succeeding Brazilian coach Otto Gloria. During his tenure, he led the then Green Eagles to the final of the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations, where Nigeria finished runners-up.
Nearly two decades later, Onigbinde etched his name further into Nigerian football history when he became the first indigenous coach to lead the national team to the 2002 FIFA World Cup. He guided the Nigeria national football team to the tournament co-hosted by Japan and South Korea.
Widely respected for his discipline, tactical knowledge and commitment to youth development, Onigbinde remained an influential voice in Nigerian football long after his coaching career.
Further details regarding funeral arrangements are expected to be announced by the family in due course.
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