The world is dotted with grass to grace stories of players, who rose from nothing to great heights, guided by providence. Most of the internationally known football stars making the waves across different leagues of the world would not have achieved their great heights if they did not get the opportunity to hone their skills and display such talents on the big stages.
But for every Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi of the world, there are thousands of equally talented youngsters, whose natural gifts were wasted because they did not get the lift or platform they needed to excel in the game.
Many young footballers struggle to hit the big stage in their careers but fail to do so because of the lack of structured development programmes in Nigeria.
According to a recent report, a small per cent of talented youngsters make it to the big stage due to several reasons. Chief among these reasons is poor football education and lack of proper mentorship.
There is a huge gap in their football education that makes it impossible for them to fit into the global football system.This gap is what a Europe-based agency, Ivory and Ebony Mega Sports Ltd., is set to bridge. Operating in several cities in Europe, the agency has been educating and helping Nigerian aspiring footballers to find the right opportunities and make the best use of their talents.
For over six years, the agency has been coming to Nigeria to train players and take the exceptional ones for trials in European clubs, where they are given the right advise and given proper tutorials on what it takes to become a professional in the game.
At its last exercise in Nigeria, the team of experts comprising Nigerian and European scouts worked with some youngsters on the pitch before taking those deemed ready for the demands of European football to clubs abroad.
Speaking with The Guardian during the week, the team led by Saint Cornel Amadi, a FIFA-licensed agent, explained that some players fail to make it in Europe because they came through the wrong structure.
Explaining the mechanics of his firm’s operations, Amadi said that Ebony and Ivory Mega Sports Ltd works with some academies in the country to train talented youngsters to give them the football education that will put them in the right condition to succeed when they get to Europe.
“At our last visit to Nigeria, I came with two experts, Konstantin Burdakov, who is the chief executive officer of Estonian club, JK Nava Trans, and Martin Petriska of Slovakia’s MFK Zvolen to work with the local coaches and see the progress of the players.
“We open camps for these players, where we look at their discipline and most importantly, talent. After each exercise we pick players that will fit into different clubs.
“We arrange practice games for the players, where we select players based on their performance on the day and group them into teams. That is the first part of the scouting. After that, we pit them to play against each other again and the successful ones will make the final.
“At the last camp, we took four players to Europe, where their journey begins.” Amadi said the journey has been eventful and rewarding, pointing at Christian Nnoruka of Ethnikos Achnas of Cyprus and Shobowale Ademola in MFK Chrudim in Czech Republic as two of his wards. “I scouted them in 2023 and they have just played one season each.”
He explained: “We had some players billed to move to Europe in our first visit to Nigeria, but the global COVID-19 lockdown derailed our plans and we had to wait for almost two years before the lockdown was lifted.
“We scouted Ademola in Lagos and took him to Europe, where he started with the juniors. But because he was exceptional, he was promoted to the senior team after just a couple of months.
“So, if a player is really talented, when you give him the opportunity to go to Europe, after a few months it’s easy for him to go from zero to the top. This is because he is well coached and positioned to meet all the challenges.”
He said that one of the problems some players have is that once they get to Europe, they want to play for the big clubs immediately without going through the ranks.
“These raw talents want to play for Real Madrid, Chelsea or Arsenal. But we tell them that if they want to play for Chelsea and they find themselves in Estonia, the only thing they can do is to use that platform in Estonia to go to where they want to be. And it takes hard work, it takes coaching and it takes discipline. I have a player that went to Cyprus because by the time they finished his visa, the season was about to start and the coach in the first team could not fit him in the fit him into his programme because he already had so many players. He was loaned to a second division side in Cyprus and as I speak to you now, he has been promoted to the first team, given a better contract, with an extended duration. So, this is the progression that these players have to undergo.
“But it is not every one of them that will just hit the ground running like Ademola or Nnoruka. Some of them will take two years, some will take eight months, some will start immediately. So it depends on how they adapt to the weather, to the food and everything around football.”
He said that the difference between training players in Nigeria and doing that in Europe is that they have more freedom to concentrate on football in Europe than they have while in Nigeria.
According to Amadi, there are so many things dogging the sportsman based in Nigeria. “You think of power, where to get the right nutrition and such other things. But when we take you to Europe, you just concentrate on football. We also take care of the different cultures in Nigeria.
“I know that when I scout players from the north, they have different physical views. When I scout players from the east, they have different physical views. When I scout players from the west there are a many different dimensions to look at it.
“We have done our scouting in Kaduna and Abuja. We know the physique of the Hausa player; his Yoruba counterpart and the Igbo player. These impact on how they play.”
Amadi said that his team has affiliations with academies, which recommend players for screening, instead of the open screening that some other scouts adopt. He explained the arrangement thus: “When you work with players that you know where they are coming from, it makes things easy for you. I will give you one example…. When you take a player that lives in one of the most horrible places in Lagos, Makoko, to Europe and he starts seeing money, he may start making unnecessary demands and completely forgets where he’s coming from. That is what you get when you do open screening because you don’t know these players’ character; they’re not disciplined. They might be very good at football, but how about their mental state? You don’t want to be dealing with that as an agent, as a football club.
“The academies that we work with have proven track records. I know that they put the players in camps; there is discipline, as well as rules and regulations. You know that whichever player you select is already prepared to play football in Europe.”
He said the process is made simpler by the different academies affiliated to his organisation. These academies, he said, scout the players and keep their dossier, which are passed to his group for consideration.
“When we came we worked with Burnaboy FC. Burnaboy is putting up a good team. We also travelled to Owerri, where we linked up with Kun Khalifa FC, which is one of the clubs featuring in the current Nigerian National League (NNL) Super Eight playoff.
“So, even though I do not go with the scouts from Europe to all those parts of the country, the scouts know the teams, who in turn prepare the players to be in good stead for scouting.
“The system is such that I know most of the upcoming players without even having met or seen them. All we do is to follow up on the players to gauge their progress.”
He revealed that at the last exercise in Lagos, about 85 academies indicated interest in being part of the event, adding, however, that they could only take 30 teams.
“Sometimes, when we scout a team and find out that they have only one or two good players, we don’t deny those players opportunity to go to Europe. We put them into other teams to showcase their talent because at the end of the day, we are not showcasing the football club; it’s all about the football players.
“We currently have seven players preparing to go to Europe. Three are going to Slovakia’s MFK Zvolen, while four will move to Estonia’s JK Narva Trans. As we speak, their documents are already in Nigeria, ready for the embassies.”
Petriska of Slovakia’s MFK Zvolen is one of the football experts involved in the process of providing young Nigerians opportunity to make the best use of their talents in Europe. He was in the party to Nigeria to provide the platform for youngsters to become top stars in the game. Explaining his club’s operations, Petriska said: “For a couple of years, we have worked with foreign players, especially from Africa.
“In the past, we used to wait for agents to send us some players, who we try and pick the good ones. We sent back those that failed to make the grade. But we wanted to make it more professional and the highest level possible. So, we liaised with Saint Cornel Amadi to scout for players directly in Nigeria.”
Petriska is pleased that players selected in Nigeria and taken to Europe, start playing right away without going through another for period of tryouts.
He said: “Nigeria is very attractive because in the upcoming years it will be the biggest in population in the world. So it’s very attractive in this way.
“For example, Lagos area has four times more inhabitants than the whole Slovakia. So, if we come and we are able to organise a tournament for teams from Lagos and its environs, it opens opportunity for many aspiring stars to exhibit their talents.
“What is also great is that there are so many young people in Nigeria, which means that there are so many young players. That’s the big difference compared to Slovakia, where in the last decades people are not having as much children as before.
“I look at it as a two-way stream that helps both sides. We can give opportunity to guys who can show their talent and in a couple of months they can go to the league and maybe then to England, Germany, Spain, France and make great money.
“There are so many scouts in and it is very tough to find any good player who is over 17 or 18 years old that hasn’t already been scouted. But in Nigeria, because of the size of population and their passion for football, you still have so many 17, 18 years old who still haven’t been picked. That’s also great.”
To Konstantin Burdakov of Estonia’s Jk Narva Trans, coming to Nigeria has cemented his belief that Africa is brimming with talents waiting to be discovered.
The Estonian team boss told The Guardian that his club usually come to scout for players for specific positions and also to get those capable of replacing departing players.
Burdakov, who said that his team is currently in the middle of the Estonian season, added that coming to Nigeria has been an exciting experience as it was his first time of visiting Africa.
He said: “We have had African players for up to 10 years, including our current captain, a 35-year-old from Cote d’Ivoire. He has been playing for over 13 years in Estonia.
“When Saint came with his ideas, it aligned with what we are doing, so we decided to go with him. I have seen that everything he said was right because African players are really fast in comparison to what we have here in Estonia. And also I like his idea about the age as the exercise is mainly for young players of 17, 18 years old.
“The potential is huge; even in our list, we have two players who were born in 2009, 16-years olds. We didn’t take them now, but we are watching their progress because we believe they will be ready in the next one or two years.”
Although his club is focused on getting players that will fit into their squad and help them achieve immediate results, Burdakov said that they are open to recruiting youngsters with potential to become great players.
“But every player we take to Estonia is required to prove himself; as you know, Estonia is not a big football country, so we provide the platform to take the players to the next step. We give them the opportunity to adapt to the European style of football before letting them go to bigger things.”
