A few weeks ago, Zango Football Academy were a visitor to Ikenne as they hosted a scouting program in order to find young U15 talents they could select, train and develop to become future stars.
Director of Sports Zango Football Academy, Coach Mansur Abdullahi who is also the former assistant coach of the Super Falcons of Nigeria, Falconets, female U13 and current coach of the male U13 in Nigeria, lamented about age cheating as well as the NFF not doing “the needful” in order to translate grassroots growth into the National team.
“We came here for the U15 scouting program but we get here and we see older people. We played, the boys were losing and they had to even stop the game because they were not playing with their age mates and when they brought their U15 we played better,” Mr. Abdullahi told Sports247.
Speaking on harnessing the talents in the grassroots and not seeing the reflection in the National team, Mr. Abdullahi said “we can’t see the effect because the NFF are not doing the right thing, they are not doing the needful.” “What I mean is that we should have one or two coaches from the six geopolitical zones in the country employed by the federation to monitor these academies where we can get the talents easily all around,” he added.
“The ministries of sports have zonal representatives and that’s how it should be with coaches. We can’t be having five thousand players coming to National camp, it’s difficult for coaches to handle and this is where the zonal coaches come in and they will feed the necessary departments with information who in turn will feed the coaches and make the work easier,” he added.
Mr. Abdullahi also explains that the issue of coaches making room for their players and neglecting other better talents as well as collecting bribes will not be the case if the coaches are well taken care of, paid well and their welfare given utmost concern.
