REVEALED: 3 Kebbi players join Egyptian club, 2 others move to Sporting Lisbon Academy
Three players from state-owned Kebbi football club Kebbi Utd have joined an Egyptian club and other young players have joined Sporting Lisbon Academy.
Five more players in Kebbi State are set to sign in the next summer European club transfer market, it has been announced.
This was announced by Mr Pedro Batista, a former director of Sporting Lisbon, in a statement in Birnin Kebbi, the capital of Kebbi state.
Mr Batista said that much progress has been made in the Kebbi State football sector in recent years.
He said: “A few years ago, when I met Mr Emmanuel Amunike, a former Nigerian player and now respected coach and businessman based in Sweden, we started talking about Nigeria’s enormous potential in football. We recognized that Nigerian players are second to none technically and physically and that the biggest obstacle they faced in making the transition to football outside Nigeria was understanding the game properly. Nigeria has great potential but lacks proper youth football programmes.
“So we put together a team to tackle this and we looked for the best on the market: coach Telmo Costa, who has coached in the Sporting Lisbon Academy for more than 10 years, and coach Jose Alexandre, who has spent many years in the SL Benfica Academy coached. two of the best youth football academies in the world. Together these coaches coached players like Eric Dier (Tottenham), Rui Patricio (Roma), Bernardo Silva (Man City), João Cancelo (Bayern Munich), Ederson (Man City) and many others who play at the highest level in Europe.”
Mr Batista also said they worked with Mr Luis Dias, the former technical director of Sporting Youth Academy, who had been coaching no less than Cristiano Ronaldo when Ronaldo started his journey at Sporting Lisbon.
“We put together a project that convinced the Kebbi State Government to make things happen! Having these coaches full-time in Kebbi State, coaching and overseeing a state academy that includes two U12 teams, two U15 teams, one U17 team and two U20 teams. No other project in Nigeria has coaches of this caliber and experience working full time with our Nigerian children and adapting the methodology of the two best academies in the world to the Nigerian reality.
“The ultimate goal was a long-term one: to shine from a very young age starting at U12 to U17/U20 when the players were ready to face the world of football! But the talent is so plentiful that we get players ready for the market much earlier than we started,” he said.
He said that last summer Kebbi State Academy sent two players to Sporting Lisbon Academy, where they trained with the Sporting Lisbon U19 team for two months.
He said: “The two children have made such a good impression that once they turn 18 they will be returning to Portugal in December!”
“And finally, in the international market, last January, for the first time in the state’s history, the Kebbi State Government saw three players from the state-owned club Kebbi United being transferred to Egypt, where the Kebbi State entered into a very promising partnership with Enppi Club, a traditional club playing in the Egyptian Premier League just this weekend defeated African superpower Zamalek 2-0!”
“But it doesn’t stop there; In this next summer market, they have already selected five players in Kebbi who will be signed for European clubs once the market opens,” he said.