Germans are arrogant — Balogun

Nigeria defender Leon Balogun has claimed that he made up his mind to play for the Super Eagles of Nigeria when he was just 15 years of age.

The burly defender hinted he made up his mind to be a part of Nigeria as a 15-year-old after suffering racial attack on the football pitch.

He said: “I was playing U-16 in Berlin, in 2003, and I had given up on my dreams of being Thierry Henry
or Ronaldinho, so I was playing at centre back,” Balogun said with a breathy purr.

“I think because my dad worked so hard to integrate into the society in Germany, it gave me the opportunity to do the opposite and connect with my Nigerian roots, he said to Players’ Tribune website.

“I never supported the German national team, mostly because I thought they were arrogant and their
football was boring to watch. Even in 2006, when Germany hosted the World Cup — I secretly cheered for them to lose. Because I was a kid and I was rebellious. And because, even though I felt in my mind that I was just as German as all the other kids, a lot of people didn’t see me like that.

“The other team had this huge striker. He was bad news. I played really well, and I kept him in my
pocket. We were up 1–0 at half-time, and as I was walking to the locker room, the striker kicked the
ball at my head. It missed me by about an inch. Woosh! I turned, and he was yelling at me. He was
calling me the n-word, using other racial slurs.

“Nobody did anything. There were people all around us, and nobody did anything. After the game, while
we were still at the park, I told my dad about him kicking the ball at me. ‘Leon, you must always be
calm. You’re smarter than they are. You’re better than they are,’ said my father.
“Then I told him what the boy said to me. And that, for the first time in my life, was when I saw my
dad lose his cool. He had this look on his face. I told him I wanted to go home because mom said she
was making a nice dinner. No, we have to fix something.”

So we waited in the parking lot for the boy to come out with his parents. They did. And my dad let them
have it. ‘Hey, how can you raise your kid like this? Do you know what he said to my boy? We all come
here to play football, and you lost, and that’s the game. But your son is 15 — he’s 15! — and he acts
like this. I hope that you can one day fill his heart with love, instead of hate.’

“Their back-and-forth went on for a while, and the other parents weren’t very nice. But I will remember
what my dad said forever: ‘Love, instead of hate’. He was very upset in that moment, but he used
empathy over rage. And I began to understand, little by little, how he made being an immigrant look so
easy. I think because my dad worked so hard to integrate into society in Germany, it gave me the
opportunity to do the opposite and connect with my Nigerian roots.”
Even after I overcame some of the injury issues I had as a teenager and began playing regular minutes
in the Bundesliga, that thing — the part of my soul that I had been told to heal all those years ago —
was still missing from my life.

“In 2014, I was coming to the end of my contract with Fortuna Dusseldorf. I wasn’t sure where I would
go next. There was uncertainty in my life, one night in March, my phone rang. It was a Nigerian number
… it was Stephen Keshi, the Nigerian national team manager. I was sweating as soon as he introduced
himself. I wanted him to say the words I had thought about for so long.

“He spoke for a while about how he wasn’t totally familiar with me, but he liked how I played. Then he
said it: ‘I would like to invite you to be a Super Eagle. Those words … they meant so much to me. It
meant validation for every step of my footballing journey. It meant happiness for my family. Most of
all, it meant an opportunity to go to Nigeria. And that… that was everything to me.”