SOUTH EAST NIGERIA

There is a high failure rate of player’s transition from youth football to professional football in Africa. Our investigation has traced this negative development in African football to almost 0 percent of the presence of professionals handling the training and education of young players in Nigeria and other African countries.

Professional football imposes challenges that are both physical and intellectual to football players. Our investigation revealed that the average African players has all it takes to meet the physical challenge or demand of the game, the same can’t be said of the ability to cope with the intellectual demand of the game, due to a faulty foundational preparation.

For the past five or six years, the National Association of Nigerian Footballers (NANF), a professional body of players in Nigeria committed to protection and promotion of the welfare of players and by extensions, the overall development of the game in Nigeria, has put in place programme for the development of Nigeria’s talented youths with the potentials of becoming professional players in the near future.

Some of these programme includes, "football in the Community project" "Talent facilitation project" and the "NANF Grassroots Football project".

The operation of these projects hinged on the twin concept of the "education of our young players along side their academic discipline over the years culminated in the building a football institution that would serve veritable platform for the training of the football talent as well as their social and academic skills simultaneously.

The function of the "National football college" can be linked to a factory where all the raw materials are processed to produce a required product.

The essence of all the youth project established by the NANF is primarily to discover talents from the various grassroots project and organization, which are subsequently processed at the "National Football college to bring out the best in the players for the past 5-6 years, the players union (NANF) through its various youth programme from competition to development, has discovered and produced players for all categories of the National teams including some professional football clubs within and outside the country.

The football college presently seating on 30 hectares of land in Owerrinta-South east of Nigeria has the potential of providing an average of 200 top quality players annually that can fit into any top teams in the world.

Currently the union has completed the integration of other youth development activities across the country for the purpose of establishing a wholistic approach towards the development of our young footballers under the structure of the National Football College.

Interested clubs and managers should contact the director of the college through E-mail : Harris@nigerianfootballers.com   nanfharry@yahoo.com 234-8035612347 for further details.