President/Founder, Nigeria Youth League Cup (NYLC), Robinson Adakosa, has declared that the purpose league is aiming at bettering the lot of Nigerian footballers and to address all issues that are associated with transfer of players to clubs in Europe and other places.
Adakosa stated this at the fundraising gala held in Abuja during the weekend, noting that academy and club owners have lost fortune to agents whose sole aim was to reap where they didn’t sow.
He said it’s time for club and Academy owners to enjoy the fruit of their labour, expressing confident that NYLC will give a visible platform to players to display their talents and put a stop to slave contracts by Nigerian and African players.
According to him, the League is coming up with a technology-driven system where players’ progress are monitored.
“The NYLC was borne out of frustration from stakeholders especially Academy owners and footballers. On my own background, I have a football academy and it pains a lot after spending so much money, your resources, training those guys (footballers) and at some point when you expect to make some money out of your investment, then you see clubs and agents from abroad want to get these players free of charge. They’ll be asking for free agent and all like that.
“They would say, “I can’t really sign this player unless he’s a free agent”. So, it becomes frustrating. And because the players are also desperate, they also want to betray the club owners despite what we sunk into the business to make sure that they get the visibility they needed. But out of desperation, they want to betray their contracts, they want to sign with these agencies and clubs in Europe.
“Most times, these are not usually too good for them because they are not the top clubs they are really looking out for, they are just coming to rip off the African market, the clubs and also the players, and end up giving them peanut.
“Sometimes, if you look around and see some of the guys you heard have gone to Europe, you will see them roaming the streets. Some of them being deported, some being involved in other criminal activities.
“And when you interview them, they would tell you they’ve been deceived, misled. And for us to stop this, I’ve interviewed stakeholders, Leagues, top agents, top clubs and the question was “Why is it that they don’t have value for Nigerian or African players?” They spend so much money signing the South American players with tens of millions of Euros and dollars but in Africa, reverse is the case.What they are saying is that we don’t have any organised league for youth in Africa and they said for that reason there is no visibility for the players. There is no way they can analyse or know about them and so it becomes difficult for them to invest so much money on them.
“It is in this line that we’ve decided to do the right thing and ensure that we have a Youth League, not just a youth league but a competitive one and not just a competitive one with a structured and technology-driven League.
“We believe that with the kind of partnership we’ve already created, we’re sure this will be sustained. We are already with Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in terms of partnership. We’ve also spoken with Latvia Premier League and signed an agreement with them. We want to ensure that we have a very good transition whereby we have our players moving to clubs properly so that every transfer we do will pass through the league system and can be monitor transparently and l fairness as well,” Adakosa said.
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