By Daily Sports on June 8, 2017

The man who may be the next leader of Great Britain as that country hold elections to elect a Prime Minister today, Jeremy Corbyn has shown his love and care for the development of grassroots football.

Recently, he made a strong case for grassroots football funding that warmed my heart. As part of his Labour Party manifesto, Corbyn pledged to ensure that the Premier League upholds its promise to push five per cent of the income generated from television rights into grassroots football.

The Prime Ministerial hopeful, in a training session on London’s Hackney Marshes, said:  “Despite the game we all love receiving lucrative domestic and international TV deals, the grassroots game has been shamefully starved of funding over recent years.

“Too often, youth football teams cannot find pitches to play on and when they do they are expensive and the facilities are not fit for purpose.”

It is very pleasing to see and hear someone gunning to be leader of a big country like the UK caring so much about the state of grassroots football.

Although the Conservative party headed by current PM Theresa May, who is projected to be the likely winner of Thursday’s polls has fired back at Corbyn by pointing out that “there is more money going into grassroots football than ever before,” the debate on funding for grassroots football is a recognition in high places that it is important for the social, economic and prestige interests of a country to motivate its youths to develop their sporting interests.

Here in Nigeria, it is almost nonexistent to see the Nigerian government concern itself about things like the kind of pitches and other facilities available for grassroots clubs. Funding for grassroots clubs is very low in the agenda of political parties and government officials and it’s only when their selfish, personal interests are concerned that you can find a big government official caring for a grassroots club and their funding issues.

I remember some years ago when there were primary school renovations in Edo state. While the exercise was a success in terms of the improvement of learning facilities for students, one demographic suffered, and that's grassroots football clubs.

Many grassroots clubs usually used the primary school pitches to train and play matches. But the renovations did not take their interests into account and with glass windows installed in the classrooms and gigantic gates put in place, many grassroots clubs were effectively shut out from using the facilities.

Some grassroots clubs were forced to fold up and many players, as a result of idleness, joined cult groups and became nuisances to society.

We need leaders who will understand that funding grassroots clubs is a social responsibility and grassroots clubs must form themselves into some kind of pressure groups to make politicians understand that.

It is not enough to look out for grassroots clubs and hand them pennies during election time. In fact it is insulting to the grassroots coaches. A well laid out plan to help these clubs to continue to exist with the right facilities to train and improve their players, as well as seeing these players growing up to benefit society should form part of the policy of any serious political party.

Source Daily Sports

Posted June 8, 2017

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