If You Can\u2019t Get To The Stars, Land On The Moon! \u2014 Odegbami<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nOrganised matches at the grassroots are outside the realm and control of the national football associations. They have become the rich farmlands where the fruits are harvested and taken away even before they are ripe.<\/p>\n
What started as a harmless trickle in the early 1990s has become a menacing flood in the 2020s.<\/p>\n
The foreign clubs, through their scouts and agents, do not look for the technically rounded players because they have them aplenty all over Europe in their club academies.<\/p>\n
What they come to look for and take away are the football athletes, the runners, the fighters, the big and rugged players with the speed, the physique and the power to defend or power their way to score goals.<\/p>\n
The effect of this is that they contaminate our natural football culture, and install a system that encourages Nigerian coaches to abandon their traditional methods of breeding players honed by difficult terrains and poor facilities, the football artists with exquisite dribbling skills, \u2018sexy\u2019 touches and silky moves on the ball, flair and flash exhibited on ragged fields where any tactical discipline and proper organisation are impossible to be instilled.<\/p>\n
The result of this plunder is that Nigerian football, in all ramifications, suffers from the damage inflicted by the inordinate influx of European agents and scouts that have disrupted our own natural production line of exceptionally gifted players, and corrupted our coaches.<\/p>\n
Nigeria must look at what a few African and South American countries have resorted to do in the face of this problem. Countries like Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, even Cote D\u2019Ivoire and Algeria continue to explore ways around the challenge.<\/p>\n
Nigeria is not doing anything.
The country\u2019s football administrators must wake up from their present slumber, put on their thinking caps and come up with solutions that will raise Nigerian football higher, or watch her sink and be doomed forever.<\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Complete Sports<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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