Peter Rufai, formerly profiled goalkeeper for Nigeria's football national team, is dead after a period of illness, reports several media outlets.
Rufai made 65 A-international matches and guarded Nigeria's goal in the team's two first World Championship finals, in the USA in 1994 and France in 1998, when the team both times reached the round of 16. He was also team captain in the championship in the USA.
A few months before the World Championship in the summer of 1994, during the spring of the same year, Rufai had become a profile in his home country when the team won the African Championship in Tunisia. Rufai became, among other things, a hero in the penalty shootout against Ivory Coast in the semifinal.
Peter Rufai was 61 years old.
