Onigbinde describes CAF awards as fillip for national devt

Chief Adegboye Onigbinde

Former Super Eagles Coach, Adegboye Onigbinde, has said Nigeria’s performance at the recent CAF Awards is a potential catalyst for the discovery of more talents at the grassroots, if the success is managed well.

Victor Osimhen, Asisat Oshoala and Chiamaka Nnadozie were on Monday named Africa’s best players at the CAF Awards held in Morocco. While Osimhen and Oshoala were named African Footballer of the Year men and women respectively, Nnadozie won the Best Goalkeeper of the Year (women) award.

The trio were discovered and nurtured to stardom locally and according to Onigbinde, their success should serve as the turning point in the country’s quest to regain its place among the elite of the world’s game. He urged the stakeholders and leaders in the game to fashion out programmes that would aid the discovery of more talents from the grassroots.

“The award has exposed the fact again that Nigeria has abundant talents in the country waiting to be discovered. With this award, football stakeholders should draw out a programme to discover more talents. This has been my words over the years.”

“When I was a member of CAF, I had opportunity to go round Africa for technical coaching programmes and from my experience, Nigeria has more abundant football talents than any other country in the continent.

“Our problem is that we don’t have quality programmes to unearth these talents. Our coaches are not well trained and exposed to identify these talents when they see them.

“It is not all about winning the CAF Awards, but working out ways to keep sustaining the greatness of Nigerian football by discovering more talents from the country. This can only be done through a well-organised and coordinated football development