Nigeria’s a market place for talents -Aleshe

For the most part of last week, two football agents from the
UK were in Nigeria, under the aegis of Trial@rap-aid talent
identification in partnership with a renowned administrator,
Mike Idoko, to scout for talents for football academies.
The aim is to enlist talents from the country for a two-week
trial in professional clubs in England which will further
guarantee them a two-year educational programme with
colleges directly affiliated to teams in the UK and the USA.
The Chief Executive Officer, Tim Aleshe and the technical
instructor, Derek Robinson spoke to Sunday SoccerStar on
the eve of their departure.
First to speak was Aleshe.
You were in Nigeria for a week, how was the experience?
Tim: It was fantastic. We enjoyed the football, we learnt new
things.
From the profile I have seen, you scout for some teams in
Europe for their academies, may I know the process?
The process is straightforward. To be honest with you, finding
the talents is more difficult than taking the players away. First
on the issue that has to do with the age. We spent time with
the case of age more than the football itself. If they requested
for ages 15, 16, 17, and 20 and if at the end we have those on
the age bracket of 29, 30 etc, it has defeated the purpose. In
some other case, they deny the young people the opportunity
but the right thing is for us to look for quality players. For
instance, giving the U-17 the chance to play with the U-20 so
we can pair them together. All we also need to do is identify
the player, the coach and also speak with their parents based
on the educational aspect of their kids.
The whole plan, if I’m right, is on age grade development
Yes, it’s the initiative. Since we already doing similar thing in
Europe with such clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham,
Watford and Tottenham. All these clubs I mentioned are aware
of our programme. I know if I come down here (Nigeria), it will
be easy for us to get those boys. It’s a case of taking that
opportunity to gain those resources in Lagos and Nigeria as a
whole.
So, how do you rate the performances of the players you saw
at the trial?
Good, we saw about 1620 players. They came from afar as
Warri, Abuja, Abia state, Port Harcourt and Lagos. We also
have teams from nearby such as Ondo, Ogun and Oyo States.
We look at the technical aspect and we discovered that 17, 18
years old boy hardly can control the ball, hardly move with the
ball but over there in the UK, we can easily see a boy of 9, 10,
11 years old doing better. So, it shows where we are. If you
are 18 and you can move with the ball, I bet you, you will be
playing for top clubs in Europe.
Over all, will you say your trip is a success?
Yes it’s. We saw two more players, a 14-year-old boy and
he’s truly good to go straight to the academy. As I said, we
had up to 1620 players but not a single parent showed up. So,
going to UK with this boy will be difficult, they will ask us if
we got the parents’ consent or not. We have achieved what
our aim, we have come down to Nigeria without government
giving us tickets, with Ebola everywhere, election near and the
Boko Haram threat. Nigeria has a fantastic league but lack
the facility. For instance, the National Stadium, Lagos is an
eyesore and this is not encouraging, we saw people playing
football on the concrete floor while the pitch is locked.
May I know the development process for the players after
training?
We have partnership with clubs in Nigeria, where we can
monitor their progress. We will have scouts to regularly watch
them and analyze their performance. In addition, the clubs we
are taking them to in Europe already have arrangement with
some colleges ands vocational schools because education is
attached to this programme. Those who drop can still manage
to catch up and I think with all these, we are close to
success.