By Daily Sports on November 23, 2017

Anyone who follows international football in details would surely know about the French La Clairefontaine Football Academy. It is the national football centre that specialises in training French football players. The centre,  which is located about 50km southwest of Paris,  has a high reputation of producing some of the most gifted French players, among them Nicolas Anelka, Louis Saha,William Gallas, Hatem Ben Arfa, Abou Diaby, Sébastien Bassong, Mehdi Benatia, Blaise Matuidi, Kylian Mbappe, Olivier Giroud and national team top scorer Thierry Henry.

Here in Nigeria, there’s a La Clairefontaine of sorts, even if not in terms of state-of-the-art facilities, but surely in terms of football talent production for the Nigerian national teams. That academy is called BJ Foundation located in Benin City.

Just like the La Clairdontaine roll call above, the numbers of special talents BJ Foundation has produced for the national teams of Nigeria is impressive. Ederson Echiejile, Victor Moses, Ndubuisi Agu, Isaac Success, Solomon Okpako, Stanley ‘Little Messi’ Okoro, Saturday Erimuya, Osas Okoro and Erhu Obanor are some of the names who have contributed and are still contributing to the success of the national teams of Nigeria. They were all groomed in Benin City by BJ Foundation’s indefatigable Manager and Club Chairman Douglas Idahosa.

The recognition for Mr Idahosa is coming in cash as you can imagine and, as well, it is coming in kind as he is slated to receive the prestigious Nigerian Awards for Sporting Excellence (NASE) as Grassroots Sports Promoter of the Year 2017 for his role in grooming three players, namely, Moses,  Agu and Echiejile to become first team players for the senior national team, the Super Eagles, who recently secured a ticket to the Russia 2018 World Cup and are tipped to go the furthest among the African representatives at the Mundial.

Echiejile particularly has a big reason to be thankful to Idahosa. Perhaps out of the slew of players in the slipstream of talented stars the club has produced, Echiejile was the least technically gifted and wasn’t an obvious choice to make it to the top of football if the average fan was to hazard a guess back then when he was playing for the club in the early 2000s.

There was a particular afternoon then when the club was involved in a crucial match at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium in Benin City. Echiejile wasn’t having the best of games in the eyes of the fans and, crucially, the main sponsor of the club then. The sponsor got vexed by what he saw as Echiejile’s poor performance in the match and made his way down all the way from the State Box to the technical area where Coach Idahosa was seated and demanded openly that Echiejile be replaced by another player.

But Idahosa is no pliant robot as many coaches in such circumstances in Nigeria can be. He refused the demand as respectfully as he could. He saw things in Echiejile that the average eye could not see. The things that have helped the player to have such an illustrious career spanning top clubs in the world including current French champions Monaco and one that has seen him become  assistant captain of the senior National team of Nigeria.

What Echiejile (who not only played as full back then, but on defensive midfield as well) lacked in skills he more than made up for with good positional awareness and an acute sense to play to instructions and do the basic things demanded of the tactical set-up of his team. It would take an expert to perceive these qualities and Echiejile was lucky to have had such an expert in Idahosa.

If Idahosa had heeded the pressure and substituted Echiejile on that afternoon the psychological effect of that might have weighed him down and he could have felt that he had no place in the team anymore and then decide to quit to another where he may not have got the best footballing education, or he might have quit the game entirely.

There were also reports then about the skepticism of family members of Ederson regarding his chances of making it in the round leather game. Reportedly from an academics-inclined family, there were said to be heavy pressure on him to abandon football for formal tertiary education.

However, Coach Idahosa gave reassurances by grooming the lad for sporting greatness and today he has the big education along with the riches that living and working in several countries can bring.

It is partly in recognition of these silent but huge roles played by Idahosa that he is being honoured by NASE next week Saturday, December 2, at Airport Hotel, Ikeja Lagos. As one senior writer of Daily Sports put it, “It promises to be the mother of all awards for 2017.”

Heavyweights of leading Nigerian blue chip companies are among dignitaries expected to grace the awards ceremony. They include Francis Peters, Deputy Managing Director of Aiteo Group; Edem Vindah, Media & Public Affairs Manager of Nigerian Breweries Plc; and Uche Onwudiwe, Marketing Manager of Guinness Nigeria Plc.

Feelers for the organisers also indicate that top government functionaries and other major sporting stakeholders, whose identities would soon be unveiled, would equally grace the event.

Yours sincerely also hopes to be there live. I can hardly wait . . .

Source Daily Sports

Posted November 23, 2017

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