Era of open screening for age grade teams over ― Gusau

Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) President, Ibrahim Musa Gusau, has said the era of open screening for age-grade teams, male and female, will not happen under his administration.

Gusau, who stated this in an exclusive interview with Tribune Sports in Abuja, said the NFF is coming up with a structure that will allow grassroots football coaches to identify, scout and recommend talented and skilful players to the national team coaches. He said inviting more than 1,000 players to a camp under the guise of selection for the age-grade teams has not really yielded any positive results but wasting of precious time and energy.

He however assured that Nigerians will see changes in all the national teams very soon as discussions are ongoing with stakeholders of like mind to achieve this. He said consultations are on with sponsors for the age-grade teams to bring out the best in them.

“For the age group teams, the era of inviting over 1,000 players or more to camp is gone. You come to the venue of the screening and what you see is a chaotic situation somebody will tell you he is screening to get the best players. My question is how can you screen or get the best from the multitude that throngs the camp in that kind of situation? This will definitely not happen under my watch.

“We must create a way within which we find young talents from the grassroots so that anytime we are calling for U17 camp or any of the age grade teams, we must be sure who and who are in camp because we already know the established players.

We have already known them and we are only inviting them to the camp because they are already in a pool. Maybe if we need 30 players we can invite 60 and we know why we are inviting them and we streamline them but not just throw the camp open anyhow and get nothing at the end of the day.

What do I mean by getting nothing? There is no way you will tell me you discover a talent after just 30 minutes in training and tomorrow you ask the same boy or girl to leave the camp because he is no longer a good player, how did you assess him in the first place? What we are saying is that through our grassroots developmental program.

“A few days ago, we were discussing how we are going to get sponsors for the U13 and the U15 teams which are going to be the bases from where we will get players to the U17. It is through a program like this that we have to get the players.

It is going to be an open affair which will be at the state and the zonal levels. If you think you have an academy, go and participate there. Don’t think because you have one academy and we have camp opened you will just bring your players, no. If you have an academy, it must have a base and the base must be any of the states. Take your players whether U15 or U17 and if he or she is a good players, he or she will be part of it. A golden fish they say has no hiding place.”

“We are also going to be organising periodic training for the grassroots coaches. We will take at least five from each state, and pay them some tokens to motivate and encourage them. They (the coaches) will now be the ones to be identifying these talents (at the grassroots) for us. They know where competitions are held in the states and of course they will be there, to watch, and scout and this is the training we will organise for them. The coaches are expected to be given us monthly reports and let us know the direction we are going. They will have players they have identified and follow consistently.

“Nigerians will see the changes in the national teams very soon. We just have to do things the right way although we know that it is not going to be easy we’ll try as much as possible to do our best through consultations, and mutual discussions with the people who understand where we are heading because it is not easy to change the narrative especially when people are used or familiar with certain things. There is going to be a paradigm shift. But I believe that through mutual conversations and discussions as I have rightly said, people will really understand where we are going.

ALSO READ FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE