Cultivating football from the grassroots

Today, it is incontrovertible that footballing has become a full life career like any other trade or academic discipline globally.

Far gone are the days that soccer used to be a mere past – time exercise or hobby which people would play for the fun of it. In the gone generation, those who made fame and little money out of it along the way only did so by addendum of luck or grace and accident.

For example, the likes of Segun Odegbami, Christian Chukwu, Emmanuel Okala, Adokiye Amiesimaka, to name a few, had their different chosen trades and academic endeavours which they were pursuing while playing football for self and public entertainment. It only became their source of fame and wealth resulting from their dexterous exploration of the talent deposited in them in the area of soccer. 

Basically, none of them had it in mind to make a full career out of football, neither was there any conscious official scheme of grooming future professional footballers from the cradle. These mentioned stars and many others in their generation, (dead and living), rose to football stardom by career distraction.

Today, however, footballing has gone professional. It is now a full time career like Law, Engineering, Medicine, Journalism or any other life-sustaining trade that requires organized training. It is no more the mere fun fare it used to be. Therefore, the need to start combing our streets and compounds in search of human seeds in football that will be planted, nurtured and tended into full grown football trees that will blossom professionally both at home and in the diaspora, cannot be over-emphasized.

We should all remember that players like Austin Jay-Jay Okocha, Kanu Nwankwo, Sunday Oliseh, Peter Rufai, Taye Taiwo, to mention just a few, all started as street orange players. They all got to the heights they now find themselves today, not by design, but by sheer grace.

Global footballing has gone past stardom by accident. Let our governments at all tiers begin to pay very serious attention to the establishment of football-emphatic institutions, which will serve as ready bakery of career footballers.

By the way, one doubts if there is any country that would wake up wishing for war. We all desire peace. Yet, there is no country without basic training schools for all arms of defense. In Nigeria, there are military schools (Primary and Secondary), which main curriculum is militarized training with some addendum of liberal academics. 

This means that every pupil therein is basically conscious that he is a professional soldier in the making, with book knowledge to aid. Then, we have the crest in the degree  - awarding Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA); all in the bid to make career soldiers out of the graduating students therefrom. 

If Nigeria, as a nation, could give this much into preparing for something we all ill-desire; which hardly yield any revenue, why then, can we not also devote appreciable dose of resources into the foundational solidification of football and even other sports, which have always remained a desirable, profitable and effective source of revenue, entertainment and positive distraction from the societal maladies that have always afflicted humanity, occasioned principally by maladministration.

Now is the time that all and sundry should join in materializing the dreams of Fashanu, Odegbami, Victor Ikpeba and many other Nigerian patriots who envisioned the conscious development of grassroots football for the country.

We must intensify our effort to catch them young and groom them up.

Yinka Awosanya

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