Former Super Eagles coach, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde, has praised the wife of late Nigeria’s most celebrated soccer player in the history of football in the country, Teslim ‘Thunder’ Balogun, Alhaja Mulikat Balogun, as the family gets together in their home in Lagos to mark her 27th anniversary. Onigbinde said in Ibadan that it was the late Alhaja Mulikat who motivated her late husband to become Nigeria’s greatest soccer player and indeed a hero figure that he became nationwide. Onigbinde who was Nigeria’s first football coach to handle the senior national team to the FIFA World Cup finals at Japan/ Korea 2002, said in some of the matches he watched, ‘Thunder’ Balogun played in his active international days, his wife Mulikat, in fact took it as a ritual to encourage her husband to score winning goals in crucial matches before the kickoff of such games. Read Also: NFF, Ogun State seal pact on football matches and events! This enabled ‘Thunder’ Balogun to spread his name nationally and even in the Diaspora. Thunder put in extra efforts that distinguished him in all the games he played before he retired from active football He said it’s on record that it was Madam Mulikat who ensured he returned to Nigeria to continue his football career when he first rejected the plea of then Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo on recall to help the West Rovers FC win the Challenge Cup, the biggest football competition in the country at that time.