By Andrew Abah
The Chairman of Nigeria Nationwide League One H.E Agara kicked off the Nationwide League One U19 Youth League in Abuja as part of 10-year development plan towards discovering of talents at the grassroot.
The Chairman ably represented by NLO board member Barrister Babatunde Bocknor explained that the essence of the programme is take the round leather back to the people where future super eagles like Osiehm, Ekong, Wilfred Ndidi and others will be discovered.
" I can tell you for free that it is a deliberate by the NLO League Board to develop the game at the local level.
" You can see the massive turn out at this Yaya mini stadium being the first match, subsequent matches here will be d filled to brim
" He added that discovering them at this stage will massivesly help in solving our national team problem and the issue of age cheat will be drastically reduced.
" Honestly, I am not surprised because I know that the NLO., is one of the most fastest growing body of the NFF and what we have seen today is not a day job ,it's what we are prepared for and the CEO in person of shola ogunnowo is an hard working person so i'm not surprised seeing this marvelous outing by the both teams.
"Bringing the game to the community It is sacrosanct that the purpose of the Nigeria Natiowide league is to catch them young ,is to ensure that we catch them young and the only way you can catch them young is to go to the suburb and see talents that are in the suburb waiting for this kind of opportunity to be exposed and that is the essence of us dragging the game to the suburb like this. the main reason is not only to entertained the people who can make it down to area 3 but also to ensure that we move the game closer to the grassroots.
"Yes I am optimistic that this objectives will be achieved because in fact we are going to see more of this, the playoff is obviously i can beat my chest to tell you that we are working towards moving the playoff to suburbs like gwagwalada , Abaji , Kwali this is what the NLO is thinking of doing