By Daily Sports on October 27, 2016

64 grassroots football clubs from Nigeria and some other West African countries are set to slug it out in the maiden Frank Peters Under-19 football tournament which would commence November 6 in Ogun State, South-West Nigeria.

The summer slam of a competition would be played at the Ijebu Ode Stadium. Winner of the competition (which will end on November 21) will be given a cash prize of 1.5 million naira, while second-placed and third-placed teams will receive 400,000 naira and 200,000 naira respectively.

Frank Peters is a UK-based Nigerian businessman and football proprietor. He is the president of one of Nigeria’s most ambitious football academies, Real Sapphire.

The director of Real Sapphire and one of the organising brains behind the Frank Peters Cup, Francis Ogette, said that the soccer coaches and top European scouts and agents will be on hand to select the best 16 players of the competition and they would then represent a Nigerian team in an international tournament in Durban, South Africa.

“We want to discover which are the top football academies in this country through this competition. Every academy likes to think they are the best, but we hope a competition like this will help settle the question and provide stars for national selectors,” Ogette said.

Coach of the winning team would lead the Nigerian side to the Durban tournament.

Screening of teams to ensure only players of the right age will be held on October 28 at the National Stadium in Lagos for academies based in the Lagos area.

On October 29 it would be the turn for screening of teams in and around Ijebu Ode.

As at press time, the organisers were still liaising with some of the teams through a Whatsapp chat group to discuss whether the tournament should be on a knockout basis or have a grouping format.

So far, some top grassroots clubs have confirmed their interest to participate. They include Warri Wolves Feeders team of Warri, BJ Foundation of Benin City, Buruj Academy, Lagos, Benin Warriors of Benin City.

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HERE’S WHAT MAKES A GREAT GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL COACH, AND IT’S NOT JUST TACTICAL OR TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

Ever since young grassroots players started to make millions of pounds and euros from their sojourn to Europe from Nigeria and other African countries, a lot of coaches, who also double as grassroots football club owners, have become desperate to fulfill their financial dreams by grooming talented young players for a successful career in the top echelon of club and national team football.

Ever too often, in their desperation to become successful, many a grassroots coach try to force their players lives into being some kind of extension of their own dream.

Desperate for the lucre that a successful player could attract for them, lots of grassroots coaches are obsessive about the right behavioral, technical and tactical approaches that can get a player to perform in the game. They inundate the players' lives with so much on-field information as if everything in a player’s life revolves around what happens in the few hours he spends in the training ground.

The simple truth is, no matter how brilliant a coach’s ideas and teachings method about making a pass, dribbling opponents and shooting to score goals are, most of the grassroots players under his care would not make it to a fuller professional level. So teaching just technical skills end up being irrelevant to the young kid who may never use them professionally.

What the player takes out of his days, months or years spent with a coach are impressions that stray much beyond a coach’s knowledge about tactics, technique and physical exercises.

A coach therefore has to realise that he has a responsibility to ensure that their kids are imbued with much broader skills that have to do with stuff that would make them more useful, resilient and knowledgeable in the wider world away from the field. Unfortunately we find situations where players leave football at the grassroots level and they seem totally unprepared for the task of living a fuller life.  What they have are memories of a coach telling them how poorer than Xavi they were with their on-field decision-making, how indisciplined and slow their game was and so on.

A great coach needs therefore to be a true mentor who would teach a young kid such high values related to winning, losing, being part of a team, being respectful and tolerant of other people’s rights to their opinions, etc.  He asks himself, “what does this kid need to succeed in the pitch and outside of it?”

Kicking the ball around would not guarantee young players would learn important life lessons about proper dietary habits and core life values. A coach has to strive to know what’s right about life generally and point these out for young kids.

It is possible for a coach to think he’s failed in these areas severally and becomes defensive of his inadequacies. But the right approach in life is to acknowledge your faults and work to correct them rather than wallow in them.

When a kid grows out of a team with such characteristics as self-respect, loyalty, determination, fairness and compassion, then the coach who has enabled him to acquire these things can be regarded as a truly great coach.

Source Daily Sports

Posted October 27, 2016

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