Tijani Babangida
| Personal information | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Tijani Babangida | |||||||||||
| Date of birth | 25 September 1973 | |||||||||||
| Place of birth | Kaduna, Nigeria | |||||||||||
| Height | 1.69 m (5 ft 6 1⁄2 in) | |||||||||||
| Playing position | Winger | |||||||||||
| Youth career | ||||||||||||
| Arewa Textiles | ||||||||||||
| 1990–1991 | Niger Tornadoes | |||||||||||
| Senior career* | ||||||||||||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) | |||||||||
| 1991–1996 | Roda JC | 78 | (26) | |||||||||
| 1991–1993 | → VVV-Venlo (loan) | 34 | (19) | |||||||||
| 1996–2003 | Ajax | 77 | (20) | |||||||||
| 2000–2001 | → Gençlerbirliği (loan) | 12 | (2) | |||||||||
| 2001–2002 | → Vitesse Arnhem (loan) | 14 | (1) | |||||||||
| 2002–2003 | → Al-Ittihad (loan) | 5 | (0) | |||||||||
| 2003–2004 | Changchun Yatai | 29 | (8) | |||||||||
| Total | 249 | (76) | ||||||||||
| National team | ||||||||||||
| 1994–2004 | Nigeria | 36 | (5) | |||||||||
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Honours
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| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Tijani Babangida (born 25 September 1973 in Kaduna) is a retired Nigerian footballer, who played as a winger. Known for his pace, his playing style was sometimes compared to that of Marc Overmars. Babangida spent the majority of his playing career at Ajax. Overall, he played in five different countries on three different continents. At club level, Babangida spent nine years in Netherlands, playing for VVV-Venlo, Roda JC and Ajax, winning the Eredivisie plus KNVB Cup double with the latter side.
He played over 30 games for his national side, including four at the 1998 World Cup in France. He participated in two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments and won the 1996 Olympics with Nigeria. Babangida made his international debut in 1994. He lost his place in the squad right before the 2002 World Cup. After a two-year lay-off from international football, Babangida was recalled to the Nigeria team for the 2004 African Cup of Nations preparations in Tunisia.
Babangida, sometimes nicknamed "TJ", was born into a large family in the city of Kaduna in 1970. He was married to Rabah (now his ex), the sister of Daniel Amokachi's wife. Two of his nine brothers, Ibrahim and Haruna are also footballers. The former spent five years at Volendam, while the latter became the youngest ever player in the history of Spanish football to have a buy-out clause in his contract and the second youngest player to appear for FC Barcelona, when he made his debut in 1998 as a fifteen-year-old. In 1996 Babangida acted in a commercial add for ABN-AMRO in which he points out his hesitations about a contract of some sort. In 2004, Babangida signed a $2 million contract to bring new footballs to Nigeria. The same year, he opened a shopping mall in Kaduna. Upon retiring from professional football, Babangida has been working as a football agent.
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