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Football academies
are seen as avenues where football potential can be developed , and in
Nigeria , they run into hundreds. Best known among them are the Kwara
Football Academy, which once had the former Super Eagles coach, Clemens
Westerhof as its technical adviser and the Pepsi Football Academy, which
currently has about 3,000 students and has been able to produce Eagles
players like Mikel Obi, Osaze Odemwingie, Joseph Akpala, Elderson
Echejile to mention but a few.

About two weeks ago,
Paul Hamilton, former Nigerian International who also is the proprietor
of the Weekend Soccer Academy expressed dismay at the speed at which
football academies are proliferating around the country without caution.
The former coach of the Super Eagles and Super Falcons went on to say
that if left unchecked this trend could lead to a decline in the value
of the products gotten from the academies.

A place to discover talents

Speaking with Iain
Nelson, a consultant with the Pepsi Football Academy established in 1992
under the leadership of Kashimawo Laloko, he revealed that though the
Academy started as a marketing strategy of Pepsi, it has come to mean a
lot to the youth in Nigeria. “With Pepsi however, there is the
additional opportunity to go on to win scholarships abroad and play
football while they study, something that may have never happened if
they were somewhere else. One thing about football academies generally
is that it is a place where talents are discovered.”

This assertion may
not be farther from the truth. During the 2009 edition of the FIFA U17
World Cup that was held in Nigeria, it was discovered that a majority of
the players were picked from football academies which even had no
prominence or popularity. A lot of these academies are privately owned
and it is the joy of the financiers and proprietors that the players in
their team are given the opportunities to showcase their talent.

Joy Etim, a former
assistant coach with the Super Falcons speaks on how she started her
academy, Puma Football Academy. “After I got my coaching certificate and
did not get a job in the sports ministry, I decided to create a job for
myself, by coaching secondary schools. Later I thought about it that
not all the children walking on the street would have the opportunity to
go to the schools where I coach, so I decided start the academy. We
have a boy’s team and a girl’s team and some of them have graduated into
clubs for seniors also run by her.

Love for what you do

She speaks on her
love for what she does, “The effort it takes to manage the academy is
not easy but I see these children as my own. Not all of them would have
the opportunity to go to school but in the academies, you are able to
have a kind of influence in their lives and impact them in a positive
way, on and off the pitch.” Another coach, Samson Famose, proprietor of
Akinola Football Academy says he started his academy because of his love
for children. “Every time I see these boys loitering around the area
doing nothing ,I bring them together in the evenings to just play
football.” Famose who started his academy with just five children now
has over 50 of them enrolled in his academy.

Ossy Nwokeabia,
proprietor of Collin Edwin Global Sport Limited, a company that
organises local tournaments says that football academies are the bedrock
of sports in the grassroots. “Though I do not have a club personally, I
have friends who have them and I tell you if the youth have not playing
together as a team, how will they come together for competitions.
Besides when scouts come looking for young players, that is the first
place they go to.” Etim agrees with this assertion.

“When scouts come
over to Nigeria, they get in touch with people who have academies. Just
recently, I had one person come that said he wanted to get athletes. I
refused to help him pick them because he was getting them for the
national team of a West African country.”

Made fit for life

Apart from being an
avenue to showcase talent, Etim said, it helps give the children a form
of stability. “It is an avenue to at least take them off the streets,
even those who are not on the street may have some sort of problem, and
our academy tries to make them feel at home. You know there are times
that as a coach you do the work of a psychologist, parent, advisor etc.

Nelson also agrees
that though the first reason for creating a football academy is to groom
talent, he believes that stay of the child in such a group does more.
“One benefit of this is that the kids get to grow up in a very
structured environment where they are taught discipline because to be
sincere with you, not all of them would grow to become the next Mikel
Obi. But you would have at least instilled in them something that they
get to live with for the rest of their lives.”

For football
academies to reach their highest potential however, Nwokeabia has said
there is the need for the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) to have
impute. “The work that the coaches are doing is good but it is important
that tournaments should be organised for the academies, like
inter-academy competition, maybe regionally and then the best in the
regions would face each other in a national final. Most of the
opportunities they have to participate in tournament is by virtue of the
tournament organised by private hands which may be not have a wide
reach like the NFF but if the Federation is able to organise
competitions that would have a wider reach then it would be better for
our football here in Nigeria.