I remember the exact moment when I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
I was watching Nigeria play Switzerland in the under-17 world championship. My dad took me as he’s a huge football fan, and the stadium was packed.
In my mind, like everyone else, we expected we were going to win. Even when we were losing by a goal, there was still hope. Then we had this clear shot on goal that hit the bar. The player’s name was Otubanjo. I will never forget that name because I eventually found out he graduated from the secondary school I attended. If he had scored, we would have given ourselves a chance to keep fighting.
Everyone was disappointed that day. Nigeria lost. But that disappointment, it did something to me.
I said, ‘This is what I want.’
Not the disappointment, but to be a footballer.
It came to my consciousness that I had to start playing football, and this memory is one that reminds me of why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
Before that match, I had always played football on the streets with my mates growing up, but watching that game was different. It wasn’t until I gave my first assist in a proper match that I said to myself, ‘Wow, you can actually do this.’
Football didn’t just change my dreams—it changed my geography. I’ve never been someone who stayed in one place: Lagos, Delta, Port Harcourt, some Northern states, and Akure, Ondo State for a while. School and football took me to all these places.
I studied Computer Science at the Federal University of Technology Akure. Football there was fun, but it had limitations. In Lagos, there’s a football tournament happening almost every week. In Akure, you’re having a tournament probably every three or four months. So I knew that if I wanted real opportunities, I had to be where the action was.
In my first year in school, I was captain of my department’s football team, then captain of the faculty team. At the end of the inter-faculty tournament, I was given the Most Valuable Player award.
A friend soon introduced me to a coach in town who got me into an academy, a really good one. I was with them for years, learning so much. I got opportunities to play for some local clubs.
I came close to playing professionally. So close. But I didn’t get the chance. Then everything changed in a way I never expected. My mom passed away, and coming back to Lagos wasn’t just about seeking opportunities anymore. I needed to be with my family; my brother and my dad.
During this time at home, I started taking social media seriously. I didn’t really have a plan at first. I’ve always loved to keep things to myself, but I realized there’s only so much you can actually keep because people need to see what you do. I needed to put myself out there if I wanted opportunities.
I think I’m just someone who likes to break the internet as much as I can. That’s the simplest way I see myself. Being a footballer, I need to try to break the internet as much as possible, either with what I do, with trending news or with things I want to do.
So I would make videos of me training and just put them online. I also started tweeting about Real Madrid, the club I support. Some of my tweets went viral.
One time, I was giving Real Madrid players Yoruba names. The trend got a lot of attention.
I thought, if I can do this on a regular basis, why not use it to promote myself as the footballer that I am?
That’s when I started posting my videos, talking about my passion, showing what I do.
But there was this internal struggle. I was caught between trying not to put too much out while wanting to still be out there. There was no one to plan with, no one telling me ‘this is cool for you to do, this is not cool.’ I was learning digital marketing while still training, going to the gym.
My brother stepped in to help through all of it. I learned to record myself, edit videos. I wrote sports articles, got paid, and immediately bought new football boots with the money so I could keep myself in the football business.
I took all that knowledge of social media management, digital marketing, writing, and decided to use it to build my own brand instead of doing it for others.
Playing in Lagos pushed me harder than anything in Akure. There are so many more talents fighting for the same thing. I had to be tougher, more skillful, and show more of my talent. One coach I had in Akure used to tell me,
‘The best players always play their best in whatever position they find themselves.’
I’ve held onto that statement. It’s true about football, but it’s also true about life.
I had been asking clubs for trials for a while. Cadiz Fc, other teams but nobody responded. Or they’d respond to my casual tweets but ignore the serious ones asking for a trial. So I left it. Then one day, I thought, let me try Sevilla FC.
I made a tweet to them asking ‘how many reposts to try out with your team?’ . To my amazement, they responded and said 100k.
I needed 100,000 reposts!
I couldn’t sleep for a whole day. I was thinking: I need to get this done.
The moment I put it out, people on X (formerly Twitter) started reaching out. ‘How do we go about this?’ ‘What do you need us to do?’
My teammates were sending it to groups. The whole of TwitterNG came together and said, ‘Let’s do this for this guy.’
My dreams felt closer than ever but it was looking like it was going to slip away. But luckily for me, we did it.
In record time.
At that moment, the combination of all the hard work, everything I had been doing, it all came down to that. It was wholesome. It’s something that’s always going to live with me.
After that experience, things changed for me.
I was taking a cab to the stadium one day when the driver recognized me. ‘Are you the guy that Sevilla called out?
There are places I go also where they recognize me and say,
‘Oh, it’s you! Just go in, don’t worry about paying.’
I’ve always prepared for this because I know I’m destined to do great things with football. But this just put it on a larger scale.
There are so many times when people will not see when you’re trying, putting in effort, doing things that don’t work out.
Nobody really cared at that time.
But when it actually works out, everyone says
‘Oh, he did this thing,’ which you might have tried to do many times before. The particular one that worked is just the one that made people see it.
That’s the thing about luck.
We always create our own luck.
I created it myself, but it had to be with that consistency of doing it over and over, to be able to get to the stage where it eventually works.
It’s the things you do daily that decide how it’s going to come to you at the end of the day.
You can follow Oladipupo’s journey on X, formerly Twitter, @TheRealOlaGreat, and watch him continue to create his own luck.
