KWARA FOOTBALL ACADEMY Nigeria’s best, not good enough
That became evident in June of 2000 when Germany finished last in its group at the European Championship, scored one goal in three games, losing to Portugal 3-0 in their final match.A year later the “Academy approach” was implemented, making it mandatory for all 18 top-flight professional teams to run a youth academy. Later, all […]
That became evident in June of 2000 when Germany finished last in its group at the European Championship, scored one goal in three games, losing to Portugal 3-0 in their final match.
A year later the “Academy approach” was implemented, making it mandatory for all 18 top-flight professional teams to run a youth academy. Later, all the 36 professional teams in the top two German divisions had one, this culminated in Germany’s mesmerising dominance at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Using the Germans successful model, every country is beginning to look inwards to develop vibrant football academies that will build successful teams from the scratch and safeguard its footballing future.
This took SHOT! to Nigeria’s number one football academy which has produced notable stars that have played for various grades of the national teams, domestic leagues and foreign clubs to assess the institution as Nigeria aims to produce players that will dazzle and emulate the Germans at the Russia 2018 World Cup.
SHOT! went, saw the once glamorous academy and observed the following:
Absence of synthetic pitch
In comparison to an average football academy in Europe this would be considered to be poor, not only are four pitches not enough for the institution’s teeming students of the beautiful game, there’s also no single synthetic pitch which has the advantage of always being playable unlike the natural grass pitch that can only be played on for an average of 250 hours per season. This combines to give the artificial turf a huge popularity among the major clubs and academies globally.
Lack of playing equipment for players
Speaking to some of the officials of the Academy, during our tour, the area they kept hinging on about is that of equipment. They maintained government and philanthropist should help to provide more of goalie equipment, referee equipment, football kit bags, and soccer training equipment, such as flags, cones, agility ladders, and slalom poles, all the aforementioned are vital in training sessions.
Also in an environment where some of the students are from a very poor background, it is demoralising, to be told to buy your own boots, socks and shin guards. This could easily demoralise some of the students with aspirations of becoming the next generation of football stars.
Ill equipped gymnasium
Every serious gymnasium should have modern exercise bikes, elliptical and cross trainers, treadmills, lower, upper body strength machines and rehabilitation machines that help the recovery process after injuries (which are part of the game). Most of the aforementioned are missing at K.F.A and it’s an area needs to improve upon in order to meet global standards, if our academies are to compete with the bests in the world and come out on top then same ultra-modern training facilities must be made available.
Defective admission procedure
When an official was asked, the procedure for admission into the football academy, he said “We take you to the pitch, give you the ball and it’s up to you to show us what you can do in few minutes or else you won’t be admitted”. The official’s response showed clearly that the method of admission can easily shut the door in the faces of future stars. There are global football stars that have admitted to not having the strongest of starts at their various academies but caught up with the rest of the group after some time. Anxiety and stage fright could easily sap youthful players’ confidence and they won’t be able to exhibit their inherent abilities. Instead, longer periods should be given to prospective students of the academy.