Some of the best football academies in Nigeria have all converged in the city of Uyo for the annual Superstars Tournament which kicked off on Friday with over a dozen scouts from several European clubs gracing the event.
The main highlight of the opening day saw hosts Superstars International Academy thrash Future Hope FC Onitsha 3-0. Eagle Eye Uyo were 1-0 winners over Eastern Stars Owerri, Hope of Glory Calabar 0-1 Moonluck Academy Lagos, Groomer Academy Uyo 0-0 New Generation Umuahia, Glorious Day Lagos 1-0 Melvin Foundation Benin, Cenn FC Owerri 1-0 Tender Touch Uyo.
The annual Super Stars Tournament returns for its third Edition after a Covid-19 enforced hiatus and will run from the 26th of November to 1st of December 2021.
Some of the top talents discovered from the 2019 edition of the tournament have already seen their fortunes change for good after securing moves to Europe.
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Recently, Ukrainian Premier League side FC Rukh Lviv announced the signing of six Nigerians who were products of the Super Stars Scouting Tournament.
The invitational tournament is being organized by the president of Super Stars Academy, Prince Victor Apugo, who has used his influence in the game to bring in top scouts such as Nottingham Forest head of scouting Simon Hunt, Samuel Chukwueze’s agents Graham Heydorn(Canada) and Elliot Van Til(UK), Michal Javnicky(Slovakia), Robert Paldan(Slovakia), Oleksandr Chaban(Ukraine), Yaroslav Zvarych(Ukraine), Kostyantyn Lemishko(Ukraine), Samuel Stapleton(UK), Luis Lima De Pinho(Portugal), Thomas Coakley(UK).
Apugo who was previously the General Manager of Samuel Chukwueze and Kelechi Nwakali’s former club Diamond Football Academy, said it is his personal wish to ensure that more players hit stardom just like some of the products of his former academy.
He said: “It is my pleasure to have played a vital role in the discovery and nurturing of Samuel (Chukwueze) into becoming the super star he is right now. I hope to discover more talents like him and we’ve been putting this tournament together solely for that purpose.
“We have so many scouts from Europe and coaches of Nigeria’s cadet national teams and we hope by the end of the tournaments the fortunes of some young talents will be changed forever,” he concluded.
1 Comment
Kudos to all you guys behind this project to help Nigerian football but this is not the way to go, if we really want to discover raw talents year in year out. The best way to throw up multiple talents for every position in football across the Nation is via school football competition like it was of old. All we need to do is to draw up Primary schools competition, Secondary school competition and University plus all other higher institutions competition and the best clubs around the World will be pouring into Nigeria with sponsorship money to schools and Nigerian clubs so that their Teams will not miss out in the fight for the best legs that our schools will be churning out. It is ok to have academies but such systems leave out majority of our talents who the school system cam effortlessly mop up across the Nation. What baffles me is the fact that everyone wants Nigeria to win the World cup yet no one wants to do the work that can make it happen, we have the talents, we have the personnels and we have the resources the only thing that is missing is the sincerity of purpose.God Bless Nigeria.