Past administrators laid foundation for the problem of Nigerian football- Ayodele Thomas
A prominent Nigerian football stakeholder, Ayodele Thomas has accused past managers of Nigerian football for laying the foundation of the problem that recently befell the country’s football ecosystem.
In an interview with select journalists in his office in Lagos, the FIFA Licenced football agent, and Chief Executive Officer of TopPro Sports Management Ltd, noted that it will be wrong to base analysis on the confusion that just happened in the national teams on the immediate past administrators; saying that it started a long time ago
“Everyone is complaining now because the darling team of the nation, ‘The
Super Falcons’ a ten time winner of WAFCON was booted out of the competition and even failed to pick a world cup ticket for the first time, which I think was the last straw that broke the camel’s back”,began Thomas a known grassroots and women football promoter.
“But we should remember that the Super Eagles have not qualified for two world cups in a roll which is eight years. So what we’re dealing with today did not start now. The only thing was that it got to it’s climax this time around.
Thomas while acknowledging that Nigerians and every meaningful football stakeholder are worried and genuinely concerned about the situation, attributed the failure to neglect of grassroots football development by past leaders who were incharge of our football.
“The problem started when we abandoned grassroots football and concentrated on the national team, without
first and foremost having a solid foundation upon which every player’s development is based.
“What happened is like when one wants to build a house with a faulty foundation, it cannot stand.
He expressed happiness that what he has been preaching many years ago about grassroots football development is now being championed by FIFA who has gone to the drawing board to say that football development must be tied to grassroots football.
“What FIFA has done now, is that they’ve categorized every grassroots football both school football, academy football, NLO football and amateur football and grouped them them together and given all of them the name, amateur football.
“You know that we’ve always been using the world grassroots but FIFA has come out to say they want to ensure that focus will now be on amateur football which includes all football that’s played at the local level.
He was of the view that for the country’s football to develop, the administrators must take a holistic measure and look at how it can start developing the youths right from the secondary schools; creating pathways for them to develop from secondary school football period up to when they join either a semi- pro league or amateur league.
The well travelled football administrator, warned that unless this is done and the country do away with concentrating only on national teams, it will continue to be producing player merchineries and not footballers.
“What am saying is that if we fail to urgently do the right thing, we will end up producing merchineries whose primary aim is just to further their own career, financial gratifications and social media influencers.
“When we don’t do the needful, we’re not going to be having real grassroots footballers like in the days of Henry Nwosu, Stephen Keshi and people like the current NFF technical committee chairman, Austin Eguavoen.
“All of these people we call the heroes of our past, started from grassroots football and if we don’t get that right, nothing will work in Nigeria”, he warned.
