In my last post on the 'Football Academies in Nigeria', I briefly touched on the grassroot football in the academies and the way some football academies fail the young players in their care.When you look around the footballing world, Africa has a large fan base (if not the largest) supporting most European Elite football clubs and the number of African football players plying their trade in Europe is now on the increase which is subsequently encouraging some young aspiring footballers to want to go to Europe at all cost regarldess of the danger involved.
Many football academies in Africa, (especially in Nigeria, Ghana, Camerron, to name a few), are developed without a definite & clear vision and objectives. A football academy (a factory-as it is wrongly called in England) is to help nurture & develop talented young players, many of which don't end up playing football as a career. Now there are some unregistered football academies, like I mentioned in my last post, who have become the easy targets for the unscrupulous football agents. It is important to mention at this juncture that there are some good registered football academies and professional agents out there but the ones that we should be careful with are those football agents that promise the Earth yet deliver Disaster & Misery to the unsuspecting young players and their parents who feel the grass is definitely greener on the other side of the continent. Amongst the underlying dangers with these unregistered football academies and agents is the fact that many of these players are exploited and abandoned in Europe. A lot of talks are going on as to how this can be stopped by the various authorities concerned, so for the moment I prefer to concentrate on the remaining inherent dangers with the unregistered football academies which will be summarised.
Unregistered football academies (including a tiny few registered) usually do not have a planned training program that focus on:
Most of the European teams started from somewhere, in their history, to be where they are today. Teams like Arsenal (who started in the 1886 as Dial Square) have their own youth academy, Chelsea (formed in 1905) have their own youth academy not forgeting Man. U, Barcelona & Real Madrid who all have their youth academy. Basically the lesson here is that it will take some time to fully achieve all the facets of being a totally professional youth football academy but it has to start from somewhere and this will depend on the Founder and, possibly, the football Coach(s) setting out the positive agenda to acquire sponsorships / funds [which is what my next post is going to look into].
The most important thing to remember is for the players & parents be aware of the dangers associated with both unregistered football academies and the con football agents, before you start selling your belongings for unseen fortunes or promises of European football. THINK before you sell yourself down the drain, to read more about the dangers of exploitation of African youths footballers check this http://www.sportacsventures.com/exploitation-of-African-youth-football-players/
