Magic Spongers' own Adam Bushby throws his hat in the ring for this, the second in our 10-part series on teams that made us fall in love with football. Rose-tinted glasses time...
My love affair with Nigeria began in the summer of 1994. My love affair with Africa as a whole had begun four years earlier in Italy, but those memories are hazy and clouded by vague recollections of tears and mimed ‘keep an eye on him’s. It was Gary Lineker’s accuracy from the penalty spot that prematurely ended my fling with Cameroon in Naples in 1990. And then history repeated itself as the similar rapier-like precision of a man nicknamed Il Divin Codino did for my affair with Nigeria in Boston. The Divine Ponytail, from the penalty spot at the Foxboro Stadium. Roberto Baggio stole Nigeria from me in 1994. I was ten years old.
