By Moses Nosike

In a bid to reduce the rate of unemployment among the young people in Nigeria, Gaius Salvy, partners had decided to initiate grassroot talent discovery via soccer, having discovered that there are so many grassroot talents in the country waiting for discovery and development especially in the area of soccer.

Following this, the management of Athletic Football Club Lagos, PI Football Club announced a new scouting tournament project that will see European football investors visit Nigeria.

Basically, the duo avowed commitment to new initiatives on talent discovery and nurturing as stakeholders designed the scheme to discover football talents from the grassroots, which is truly a key component of their vision to promote social enterprise.

According to the Chairman, Founder of Athletic Football Club, Salvation Alibor, “the event is set to hold between March 4 and 5, 2024 at the National Stadium Surulere.

He said this during the official unveiling of 60 grassroots hidden football talent which the organizers intend to kick off with them.

Alibor also said that the aim of the scouting tournament project is to select players who are fit for further professional contracts in Europe, particularly Brazil, Spain and Finland.

He said, “the purpose of this tournament is to help further unravel talents due for professional contracts abroad, specifically in Brazil,Spain and Finland. It’s part of our commitment to ensure grassroots development is given the proper attention that it needs”.

“This is a social enterprise and our mission is to develop hidden talents and nurture young aspiring footballers to reach their full potential.

“Our aim is to provide a professional platform for young players to showcase their skills and receive top-notch training from experienced coaches. We believe that every young athlete deserves the opportunity to pursue their dreams and we are dedicated to helping them succeed in the world of football.

Continuing he said, “some of the players that we have admitted into our teams are from the two teams we have, the Athletic FC and PI FC. We decided to combine both events because both teams are serving the same purpose.

“PI FC has a background in the church and it is essentially for the development of young people in our church community,that have the skill and the vision to go far, and are seeking platform to express themselves.

“While Athletic FC was born out of a desire to give our Nigerian youths an opportunity to soar, there are lots of young persons who are talented and are praying to God for the opportunity.

They are not members of the church, but members of the community at large and are Nigerians. We go around rural places trying to scout for them and equally give them this opportunity to showcase their talent.

Moreso, when we see that they are talented, we also try to enhance their skills, bring them to train with us in Lagos. We have professional coaches and our head coach was a professional footballer, he played for the Nigerian professional league for 12 years. He played in the Nigerian premiere league.

We also have our assistant coach who is an European classy licensed coach and he has also worked in India. So for this season they are the ones helping with our players.

The vision we have is to further develop them to bring certain expert from Europe to train for three months to develop both our coaches and the players. And we also will be doing quarterly showcases of this talents.