04/10/2008 14:35 - (SA)
Soccer riches a bridge
Under a highway in Lagos, Nigeria, young footballers hope a new focus on African football will help them make the major league too. But, as Waldimar Pelser reports, they fear their talents may not be recognised.
TO FIND the Young Stars Football Club training grounds in Lagos, Nigeria, jump from the cloverleaf highway at Dolphin Estate, avoiding the nettle bush as you land.
Then weave through weeds and dung to the clearing under the bridge, where two horses stand as if frozen in the shade. Dogs pick through rubbish left to rot.
On a dirt pitch and with barely enough cash to buy shoes, the Young Stars are defending, shooting, cheering. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday the 19 boys, all policemen’s sons, gather under the bridge at Dolphin to kick a ragtag Nike ball. They have no sponsors, no goal boxes and no cheering crowds.
James Amadu (16), the coach, shares a room at home with his police inspector father, mother, three sisters and two brothers. He admits he sometimes sleeps outside for lack of space.Football keeps him going.
“It is a game that brings people together,” he says. “It allows us to express ourselves.”
But under the bridge, football is also seen as a key to a better life. A much better life at that.
Over the last decade alone, Nigeria has produced scores of celebrity footballers who live in Germany, England or Ukraine and drive in and around Lagos in Hummers and Range Rovers when they’re home.
Their wealth is also visible to the guys like Amadu under the Dolphin Estate bridge. When Chelsea midfielder John Mikel Obi shipped a BMW X5 from London to Lagos, where he already had a Range Rover Sport and a Mercedes G-wagon worth millions, the story was splashed in a Nigerian soccer magazine. He owns five houses in his Nigerian home town.
Obafemi Martins, Newcastle United’s Nigerian star, won an Italian passport playing for Inter Milan; and this week a consortium of Nigerian tycoons said they wanted to buy the club.
Go to Amadu’s barracks home after training and the team is glued to a DVD with dribbling advice by Jay Jay Okocha – the only Nigerian featured on Fifa’s 100 list of greatest living footballers in 2004. A video posted on YouTube when he retired from Hull City this year, “Soccer God Jay Jay Okocha”, has been watched 379 000 times.
“Soccer stars live large. I love the way Jay Jay lives,” says Patrick Obu (15), who plays for a neighbouring club, also under the bridge. “My dream is to become a superstar.”
Of the 19 players at Young Stars, all but one say they want to become professional footballers. They already look the part: at Monday’s training sesssion players wore the tops of Chelsea, FC Barcelona or Milan’s red and black.
Mohammed Kaka (14) even adopted the name of the Brazilian AC Milan player and wears the real Kaka’s number 22 on his back.
Samm Audu, editor of the Nigerian edition of football magazine fourfourtwo, told City Press millions of young players in Nigeria see football as a “ticket out of the gutter” but are not getting the support they need to make the leap.
“Guys love football because they grow up playing it in the street but it is mostly money that drives their passion. Once you have a contract overseas it does not only change your life or your extended family’s, but often the whole community. It is huge. You can lift your family out of the gutter.”
After Mikel Obi won a 12 million (R150 million) contract with Chelsea in 2006, he spent 100 million naira (about R7 million) on minibuses for God’s Time Is The Best Motors, the transport business his father runs from the Nigerian town of Jos, KickOff Nigeria reported.
But Audu warns that a lack of proper scouting and training of budding footballers like the Young Stars means many future Obis might never be found.
While major clubs like Manchester United have scouts “all over the world”, including in some African countries, to spot budding talent, Audu says the Nigerian Football Federation lacks a scouting department.
Added to this is the lack of interest among Nigerians in local club level football – games between English Premier League teams routinely attract far greater support in places like Lagos than local games.
“Results of English premiership games are posted almost immediately here. For the Nigerian leagues, it often takes a few days,” says Audu. Youth football also suffers. Discovering future greats is all “trial and error”.
Amodu Shaibu, formerly with Orlando Pirates and now coach of the Super Eagles, Nigeria’s national team, agrees “not enough” is being done to develop football among the youth.
“We haven’t done so much on the development aspect of the game,” says Shaibu. “Apart from government providing an enabling environment through schools and tertiary institutions, we are supposed to have private individuals who are ready to give support to these kids.
“We have enormous talent. People must tap in. You can even make money from them in the future. We must still turn it to our advantage. It is a way to get kids off the streets.”
The kids at the bridge are waiting.
In 2010, when the Soccer World Cup kicks off in South Africa, most of them will already be 18 – Mikel Obi’s age when he made his international debut.
Meanwhile, the young Lagos players still “need a pitch and sponsors” before they can start thinking of the big league, says Patrick Obu. Access to a football academy is only possible if you have “money and connections”. He has neither. Yet still, there is hope.
Africa’s first World Cup will bring the world of football stardom a step closer to the Young Stars and give African players everywhere a “sense of belonging” after decades of tournaments on other continents, says journalist Audu.
African teams might be boosted by playing in Africa the same way Asian teams fared well in South Korea in 2002. And precisely because football in Africa is underdeveloped, 2010 will show the continent has an “equal opportunity” to compete, says coach Shaibu.
The Young Stars hope some of the 2010 spotlight will shine on them.
“Look,” says Amadu, pointing at his squad. “A great player could come out of us.”
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