White Tigers Win 2nd Spires 5-Aside Tournament
Lagos Island based club White Tigers have emerged champions of the 2025 Spires 5-Aside Naija Street Soccer Tournament in Lagos.
The Coach Emmanuel Olom tutored side defeated Papa SA football club 4-0 in the final of this year’s event at the Stables Sports Center in Surulere on Sunday to retain the crown they first won last season.
White Tigers went home with a prize money of N5 million, Papa SA received the sum of N3 million as runners-up, while Greater Tomorrow FC pocketed a consolation prize of N1 million after they defeated Chekas United 3-1 to claim the third placed honors.
For the individual honors, Ojo Rhaman finished as this season’s top scorer with 14 goals, and he also emerged as the MVP of the tournament. He received the sum of N500,000 for both awards.
Coach Emmanuel Olom of white Tigers got N250,000, as the coach of the tournament, while the Golden Glove award went to the goalkeeper of Papa SA Sadiq Ridwan who received N250,000, cash prize as well.
The initiator of the tournament, Dr. Bankole Allibay said Spires will continue to sustain the standards as they hope to build on the success of this year’s event ahead of 2026 and beyond.
In his words: We have already commenced our preparations ahead of the next edition, and we are talking to a few brands to see how we can jointly take this to a whole new level. ”
“The Spires 5-Aside Tourney is beyond just playing football, it’s a deliberate move to empower the youth hence we introduce the “Sports Meet Tech” component as part of this year’s program and footballers were able to learn mordern skills like artificial intelligence, machine learning, graphics designs, coding and more. So, the success is there for everyone to see. ” Allibay said.
This year’s tournament had (40) forty teams compete in the divisional qualifiers, while the (16) sixteen finalists made it to the state championship.
