Chairman of Remo Stars Football Club, Kunle Soname has revealed that private owners of clubs in Nigeria can only succeed if they have a well runned and functioning academy.
Soname dislcosed this in an exclusive chat with legendary Nigeria winger Dr. Segun Odegbami on Eagle7 103.7 FM’s Saturday morning show, “90 Minutes With Mathematical7.”
According to Soname, a well runned academy play a huge role in the success of the club.
“Commercialisation of football resides in the youths, what we sell to these Europeans is actually expectations, not the skill itself, not the act itself, we sell expectations,” he said. If a boy at 18 can play like this and if he gets to Europe you can imagine how he’s going to develop, that’s what they buy, they will never see finished products here and buy because they are simply not good enough. So any serious private person that wanted to do this business must have a proper, functional, well runner academy because that’s where the money is for now.
“When scouts, Sports Directors come to Nigeria they don’t go to the leagues or the NPFL, they go to the academies because that’s where the raw talents is.I was speaking to someone on Friday and he told me that he checks on widescout, a platform whereby players statistics, videos are exposed to the world and he said on widescout the best you can see of NPFL was in 2017, which was the latest they could find on widescout. But if you go to these smaller leagues they are on widescout, but we will just be at our academy and get calls from European scouts, European Sports Directors that they’ve seen a player and can he come for trials without we reaching out to them because we’ve put them on the global platform.
“So anybody that wants to do this business must go and set up a proper academy whereby the kids would be taught properly because like I said we only sell expectations. If you are trying to sell a 24-year-old nobody is going to buy from you, they only buy 18, 19 maximum, if you are 20 it’s too late. So the academy has to function properly and that can now feed into the league system.
“At Remo the academy players you see there are kids that are unable to make the cut in Europe, they are the ones that go in there and it should be the other way round. The best legs in the academy should feed into the senior team, that’s what obtains everywhere else in the world.”
How I Started Remo Stars FC
Soname explained how he started Remo Stars FC.
“The club actually started in 2010 which was somewhat accidental, we had a collaboration with a club in Belgium called FC Dender. So we started but the deal broke down so we reverted back to Remo Stars FC and we relocated to Ikenne (in Ogun State) in 2011 for, obviously, financial reasons because it’s a lot easier and cheaper to operate a football club from where I come from so that’s why we came to Ikenne. From then on we’ve been managing ourselves and so here we are today.
How Profitable It Has Been Running Remo Stars
On how profitable it has been running the club he said:”I must also say that I use to be a politician, in fact this club came about when I was a local government chairman so when I was finishing my term the then incoming chairman said he never wanted a football club, he actually didn’t believe in sport but I have assembled quite a number of young boys that I felt are talented and I saw that look if I close this up now it’s going to be a problem for these kids and that’s why I took it upon myself, that’s why I said at the beginning it was quite accidental, it was not like I set out to do this. So I took ownership of the club.
“It has been a journey that has not been very smooth like any other business. We had our teething problems but one thing was clear to me that I was never going to go back to politics so that helped in shaping my focus which takes us back to what we said earlier that people set up football clubs for various reasons and in this part of the world it’s usually for political reasons, probably that’s the major difference between what we are trying to do and what the likes of MKO Abiola (late), Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu (late) were doing then.
“We know that football can be really profitable and it quickly occured to us that there must be layers to this for it to be profitable and that was when we set up our academy, Beyond Limit Football Academy, because for us the focus in Europa are shifted to the younger ones because you need to get these kids at a much younger age, teach them the act of football and by the tine they are 18 they should be getting ready to go to Europe.
“Maybe I should also say this story, I had a boy called Ahmed Agungulori, very fantastic player we had an opportunity to take him to Portugal so we took him there I was with him when he went in trial and when we sat down at the table for them to discuss his figures we were told we are not going to get paid, we need to wait for future sell on and I said ok even though it didn’t sound right to me and we ask what the sell on is going to be and they said they will take 75 percent and we will take 25 percent and I said this is not adding up.
“So we went to another club and also a third club and we got the same result from all three of them so quickly it dawn on me that if I want to do this business I must be on the other side of the table whereby you would have a club in Europe so before my academy I’ve had a club in Europe and usually it should be the other way round. The way this played out was that I had a club in Europe before my academy so with the club in Europe we started sending few players there and we saw that the adaptation period was like 18 months for them. That again quickly dawn on me that there must be a way to shorten the adaptation period hence the establishment of Beyond Limit Football Academy, where we strive to set up the academy in such a way that it would have a semblance of what they would see in Europe such that adaptation becomes shorter for them when they get to Europe because prior to then we were having Remo Stars feeder team.
“So it quickly dawn on us that we have to set something up that would look like what they would see in Europe so that’s what brought us to Beyond Limit and that has really worked and the guys we send to Europe now they adapt faster and their adaptation is now between three months and six months which has satisfied what we set out to do so that’s been the journey.
Selling Of Players And It Effects On Nigerian Clubs Playing On The Continent
He stated that though selling of players is one of the reasons Nigerian clubs don’t do well on the continent, he however posited that football is business.
“Football is a business for us, that’s the objective. Clubs even abroad must sell players to remain afloat and it’s glaring that when you have players in the national team that are local based players it has its own advantages because you can gather them together very quickly, put them in camp, let them train and that helps with their coercion. But if they are all abroad scattered everywhere it becomes a bit cumbersome and if course European clubs would not release their players unless it’s a FIFA international window so definitely that advantage is there and that’s evident in the fact that we were in the same group with South Africa and they qualified ahead of us.
Also Read: The Rise Of Remo Stars – Lessons From Kunle Soname’s Football Revolution In Nigeria
“I’m not saying that’s the only reason but that clearly helped them. There are many reasons why players go abroad and the main reason is for them to better their lives and that of their families. For instance, clubs like mine we are forced to sell players abroad. Sometimes we willingly do, sometimes we are forced to, it’s a Nigerian thing, not all players are professionals, once they get an offer abroad they come and say this club want me this and that but we tell them listen you still have two more years in your contract there’s no way you are going to leave and you start hearing the father, mother, uncle, every start begging that this is a lifetime opportunity to make money, live better.
“So at the end of the day you are kind of forced to release those players, that is on one side. On the other side the club itself still has to remain afloat like I can boldly say it that the budget of a professional football club in Nigeria playing in the NPFL in a season, the minimum is N500,000,000, and we all know that the attendances in our league is not really much these days unlike back in the days, so the major means for clubs to make money is by selling players. Like for us in the past four seasons I don’t put a dime of my money into the club, the club runs itself, get its own money, I just go there and watch the games and enjoy myself.
He added:”So clubs must sell to remain afloat and now imagine if good players do not need to go abroad with the kind of numbers we do, like last season we sent about three players to raise money to run the club but these players, certainly, would not have gone abroad if there’s enough money in the game in Nigeria,b that is where the problem lies. There must be more money in the game in Nigeria, of a player can earn N1.5 million there’s the likelihood that he would be patient and sustain his family.
“There are players in Mamelodi Sundowns that earn $12,000, some are on $8,000 so you hardly see them go anywhere because they don’t need to so their best legs remain in their league. And we know that when you keep playing against quality players on a weekly basis you try to get better and when you are surrounded by good players in your own team you perform better as well. So until that time where there’s enough money in the league things will remain the same.
“In a podcast which went round after we lost to Mamelodi Sundowns that I said we didn’t stand a chance, even the best of us and that we’ve not sold players we would still have lost. Maybe the result wouldn’t have been that bad and the result shouldn’t have been that bad and even if we had prepared well it wouldn’t have changed anything because the quality was just different, they (Sundowns) are in another league, so we would have lost anyway.
“So the podcast where I said we didn’t stand a chance, that was recorded like three months before we played Mamelodi and I wasn’t referring to Mamelodi, I was only referring to the North Africans, when clubs pay as much as $5,000 your best legs would go there. Year in, year out thr outstanding players in our league move out so how do you expect us to compete.
“It is important that we attract big money into the this league and like I always says it’s a matter of chicken and egg, big money will not come until we improve the league and to improve the league we need big money so which comes first, that is the riddle we have to solve.”
It’s Not Enough Showing League Matches On TV We Need To Market It Properly
He said just showing league matches on TV will not change anything rather it is important to properly market it.
“It is clear to everyone that money in football is from TV, that’s where the bulk of the money comes from so we just need to organise this league better. Last season, two seasons ago we had TV now we don’t even have TV anymore so I’m not even sure we are moving forward. But having said that, something was clear to me, I have felt just putting the games on TV would sell itself but we’ve been proven wrong.
“The matches were on TV but the money still didn’t come so quite clearly a lot still needs to be done, it’s not just putting it on TV it has to be marketed properly and the football must be attractive. Nobody would want to go and watch a game where a goalkeeper, once his team has scored, starts to sleep on the ground, sleeps like 10 to 15 minutes out of the 90 minutes, because who wants to see that.
“So we just need to put the right people who are knowledgeable amd who would carve out the way forward. But we at Remo Stars will survive because we fund Remo from the money from Beyond Limit, the professional league itself is just a drain pipe. It’s good in a way because a lot of people know Remo but they know Beyond Limit but the money comes from Beyond Limit, this season alone we’ve sold six players and they command far bigger money like I said we sell expectations, if they buy players in Remo for €100,000 and €200,000 they buy players from the academy for €500,000 to €600,000, so that’s where the money is for sure.
It Is Possible For State Governments To Hands Off Football
On if it is possible for state government to hands off the running of football:”Yes it is possible and the way to do this is to just be part of it, they provide infrastructure anyway, they own the stadiums so they can actually get investors just to come and run but they can hold on to 30 percent, 40 percent but get people that would put their own money and when people put their money in enterprises they tend to look at it a lot better.”
By James Agberebi
