Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The main bowl of the Abuja National stadium was beleive of activities yesterday as football scouts from France, Hungary, England, Turkey, Portugal and Spain and other countries invaded Nigeria to recruit talents for the various European football clubs.
While the weeklong scouting exercise between Dreamland Academy and the Hungarian Embassy attracted attention from seven participating U-19 teams from every geopolitical zone of Nigeria and one team from Cameroon at the training pitch of the Mainbowl, the other side involved 10 teams drawn from different states in Nigeria.
Speaking to DailySunSports at the venue of the exercise, the CEO of Dreamland Academy, Ndudi Edede said that while the participating teams are eight, the scouts came from Hungary, Slovakia among other foreign league clubs.
The concept of the tournament was to provide a platform to promote education through sports and to discover hidden talents that abound in Nigeria by the professional foreign talents. We also want to use sports to arrest youth restiveness.
Asked the volume of talents they will harvest from the tournament, he said: “They identified eight players during the last edition and out of the eight that went for trials, five were successful. I am very sure they would spot at least 10 players, depending on the areas of their interest.”
Defending the choice of Abuja he hinged it on the new partnership with the Hungary Embassy, adding: “We are also in full partnership with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development.”