By Moses Nosike

Atlas is a brand of Alzico Limited, a company that has spent 54 years in Nigeria is part of Vita Group of Companies. It started in 1967, but the company moved to Orile Iganmu in the year 2011.

Commenting on the soccer competition, the Chairman of  Vita Group of Companies, Mr. V. Varnavas said, “one of the reasons the company is organizing soccer competition is to give back to the society where our business is thriving”.

According to V. Varnavas, I came to this country with nothing but God has blessed me here. “This football competition is one of the ways we give back to the society, and most especially the Nigerian youths. We see it as an avenue to harness youth talents in soccer, and as the competition continues we intend to expose the talented ones to the international soccer market where they can find greener pasture and better their life and by extension contribute to the growth and development of the Nigerian economy. As you can see in this game, there are a lot of talents that need to be worked on and then they would shine locally and internationally. This is our plan for them to further link them to foreign clubs”.

In addition, the Managing Director of Alzico Limited, Abraham Santhosh in this media chat said that Atlas Cup really started on the streets, at Orile Iganmu expressway. “And that was when this 10-lane road construction started. Fortunately for us the Tollgate was constructed opposite our office. So, with the road construction, government had widened the space in front of our office, even though we lost some property as a result of the expansion.

However, as a result of that wide space in front of our office, children within the environment were converging there to play football. When we saw how they were playing, we decided to buy balls, boots and some little things to support them to play. Later on, we decided to make it a proper street football. So, we decided to call it Atlas Cup because Atlas is our brand. But when the real construction of that road commenced, the children were not able to play on the road again, and for us to have shown interest, we took it to a ground just opposite Atlas Tollgate. And since then, we have been supporting them and that is how Atlas Cup started”.

According to Santhosh, this year, 2021 is almost 10 years we started it. “Last year, we were not able to do it because of the pandemic, but this year the boys informed us about their intention to hold the game and we agreed to support them.

The competition started with 32 teams that participated in this year’s tournament and it lasted for three and half months. It started on May 1, 2021 and ended on August 14, 2021 which was the finals. All games where played at Atlas Football ground opposite  Atlas Tollgate Orile and the finals were between AJ Young Talented Football Academy and Victory Professional Football Club Lagos. It took place at Campus Stadium, CMS. The game ended with AJ Young Talented Football Academy beating Victory Professional Football Club Lagos 2 -1 at regulation time”.

Continuing, Santhosh said that basically, the essence of the company organizing this kind of competition is to empower Nigerian youths and help some of them with football talents develop and discover themselves.

“The message is that apart from the soccer competition, we have employed over 5,000 workers in Nigeria. One of the reasons is that we want to pay back from anything we do in this country. That is why we are doing a lot of empowerment activities. One of them is “1000 Abraham’s Children” Feeding Programme. “During Covid-19 Pandemic, we provided them few items, sanitizers, nose masks, hand washing materials etc. for the children to remain safe and healthy, and other things we are doing in the society. We see it as our responsibility to take care of the society where we live and operate our business.

At the end of the competition several awards were presented to both government officials and people with outstanding performance during the soccer tournament.

Santhosh further said that the company offered jobs to the highest goal scorer, best goal keeper and most valuable player of the tournament.