WAM Sports Academy, ex- int’ls partner Headstart School to groom future  football stars

The chairman, WAM International Football Academy, Ayodeji Williams, while addressing journalist at the main bowel of the over 130 seater mini-stadium of the school expressed satisfaction that “real and raw talents” have been discovered in the school at the one day engagement and exposure.

The former under 17 soccer legend said the outing was thier little way of giving back to the society. He expressed that though football as a unifying factor has gone beyond what it used to be, now to a universal phenomenon which every family and countries want to be reckoned with.

“Encouraging youth sports especially football will take the mind of the youths away from criminality. There is need for households to come together and help each other morally and financially to benefit from the enormous opportunities abound in football globally.

“As our nation is presently being chocked by insecurity, football is capable of divesting the mind of the youths from evil and redirect thier attention to meaningful endeavours.

“Our vision is to catch them young.

 You can see what has happened here today. Come to think of it, if we have not come out this morning to engage and access these lads, we wouldn’t know we have upcoming stars in this neighbourhood.

“I want to say a very big thank you to the management of Headstart School for buying into this vision. Am proud of them. Indeed they have good plan for Thier students and they are  forward- thinking.

 “If we have two or three more schools that reason in this same direction around this Isolo, we will be upbeat of raising stars among our children.

“The children we have here range from five years to 15 years.  You saw thier spectacular performances

here, we only want to develop what God has imbued in them already, he said.

Williams promised to sustain the training, however appealed to the school to take good care of their pitch, get more balls, Jerseys, cones and other needs.

He thanked his colleagues, other ex-internationals: Coach Festus Odini and Coach Tony Ehis who is also the sports Director of WAN International Football Academy for the excellent drilling they gave the children.

On his next line of action, he revealed, “My next line of action will be heading to Tunisia. We have a programme in Tunisia where we are invited to come and showcase what they have seen us doing. That will be by September this year.”

Festus Odini who acted as the chief instructor during the training implored schools and parents to support thier children to develop thier talents. According to him undeveloped talent is a wasted talent.

Further urged the youths to be patient and thorough in everything they do especially football reminding them the saying that “fool’s hast is no speed”.

Odini said the children gave a good account of themselves in the areas they were trained which included, how to improve thier understanding of the role of players and principle of positioning, “killing the ball”, chest trapping, proper trapping, throws, heading the ball and others.

He reminded them that football well played according to the rules is fun.

“From what I’ve seen, the future is very bright for this young lads. Sincerely, I’ve spotted some talents. These talents obviously need to be nurtured to produce the desired result.

“They should be diligent remove unnecessary haste, show discipline and play according to the rules. Most youths interested in football this days think of going to Europe today and becoming Christians Ronaldo also today. My reminder to such persons is, act in haste, repent at leisure.”

Tony Ehis in his words Said the turn out of over 30 students of the school for the training despite being on mid-term break was encouraging to them as instructors for a start.

“This exercise today was topnotch, it was fun. I really enjoyed the commitment and skill of the young ones especially the five year old student who wore Lionel Messi adorned signature Jersey.

“I want to admonish both the school and parents of these students that sports is everything. Education with sport can pave way for the student to develop very fast. You will discover that their brain will be refreshed, and you will have

 excellent students. That’s what is happening to students in developed countries, it’s not rocket science.

“In developed countries, they combine sport with education whereas in Nigerian context, you can be a first class graduate and end up doing only but menial jobs. If you have sports by your side, you could have opportunity of doing greater things.

Nkiru Okafor, Human Resources manager of Headstart School on behalf of the school thanked WAN International Football Academy and the ex-internationals for deeming it fit to bless the school with thier highly cherished expertise.

According to her, the school will not relent in sustaining measures towards equipping thier pupils and students with all that is needed in learning, character and sports. Assured that the relationship with WAN and by extension the ex-internationals will be sustained, “this is our assurance to parents and our soccer loving pupils,” Okafor maintained.

“You can see the facilities we have here; stadium, handball pitch and others. There are areas we are working hard to improve and upgrade. So far we have affiliation with another school that has bigger field where we use for training during bigger competitions,” she said.

“As the sports director, I have noticed some student that are good, but I can’t handle thier grooming all alone. Thier turnout today has impressed me a lot. It goes to show they are untiring. With this move, we can now discover talents that will be able to represent the state and the country at bigger competitions.”