Lagos Football Association Vice Chairman/Founder of 36 Lion Football Club of Lagos, Hajji Gafar Olawale Liameed has expressed delight over the success of the IKon Allah Academy scouting program taking place in Abuja, Reelradio.com.ng gathered.
Shading more light on the backdrop of the event which started on Monday, Gafar said he graced the program to provide moral support to IKon Allah in a bid to discover and to assess players level of readiness to travel to Europe ahead of the January transfer window.
The soft spoken president of the Lagos based outfit, 36 Lion FC, also noted that first meter football is the main criteria they are looking out for in the selection process. He however revealed that out of over 400 players that turned out for the program, not more than 4 have been penciled down so far in the scouting excercise.
“It’s all for the youths and all for accessing them from here and see who and who is ready to travel to Europe very soon, you know January window is coming close, so the exercise is to see if we can discover one or two”
“Since Monday, we have seen twenty teams, that is about 400 young boys, and we have selected maybe like 4 out of 400 because we are looking for only top talents”
“We look at the first meter football as the criteria for selection, when I say first meter, we look at the control and pass that’s all, if you can control perfectly and give a tailor made pass, then you probably can play football, then later we look at strength, agility and vision”
PAIMEDIA disclosing from a reports states that the multiple award winning football administrator also attributed the successes they have achieved to the Nigeria Football Federation. He noted that without the support of the federation, they wouldn’t have had access to the players and the facilities they are using for the exercise, even as he assured to continue to work hard in ways that will bring glory to the federation and Nigerians at large.
“First of all, the federation gave us the boys free of charge, every single boy that kicks football in Nigeria belongs to the federation, they own the moral right of those boys and they are guiding them, so that’s enough for us”
“look at this pitch that we are using, the goal project, so this is one of the things they have done for us that we appreciate”
“FIFA said let them play, and the federation is also allowing us to play and scout for them, we met the president few days ago, and he gave us super encouraging words, and encouraged us to only do more which we will continue to do”
