Make Academicals Football Nucleus Of Development- Uzokwe Tells NFF

Ex-international Evans Uzokwe has tasked the Nigeria Football Federation to strengthen the mechanism for grassroots development of players to make the national team have more of players on the home. He specifically wants academicals football then vibrant in schools across the country made top priority and not something that gets mere mention one time in a year as the case is right now
Speaking to our correspondent, Uzokwe, who played for Vasco da Gama of Enugu, Imo State, Spartans FC Owerri and Niger Tornadoes of Minna lamented that defending champion, Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the African Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea is evidence that football in the country has drifted away from the sound foundations and concepts of how the game had developed over the years. “We believe so much in miracles. Now that is clear that miracles no more happen in football, the Nigeria Football Federation must take us back in time to the concept of how football was developed.”  We must restore Academicals football in schools and states as nucleus of development and as channels for talent hunt, talent development on a consistent basis. It would help the country nurture talents along the line of our brand of football gifted players would continually be recruited into clubs until they are ready and ripe for national team assignment, he said.
“These Days there is so much talk about football academies but we have no mechanism in place to monitor and control these to ensure what happens inside them are relevant to our needs”  “However, with Academicals football in place as in the 1970’s the engineered rivalry between states, and produced many of the players that made the national teams emerged, the sky is the limit because within the time that players passed through tests and  competitions of varying degrees and categories, those with rare qualities would emerge once more for the national teams such as under-20 when it was introduced and the senior team.” Continuing, Uzokwe said, I was a beneficiary of the academicals system, likewise many others. It was obvious that players who passed through it acquired desired skills. The next advantage of this was that while the academicals system produced the players for clubs and supplied the national teams, it ensured that a national team could be assembled with ease, unlike what happens these days. That means we need to build a national team made up largely of players on the home front and depend less on those based abroad.” 
The approach now is faulty. We don’t have to wait until a qualifier and competition approaches before assembling a team.  If this continues, football is likely to degenerate because five or six days are not enough a time to get the national team ready for a game. But if we have a system is in place for home grown team, it is easy to call up a few ones based abroad to join them for a game,” he stated. Adding “I had predicted we would not qualify for 2015 Afcon based on what I had seen of the team. They played incoherent football and lacked character”  “Over time I had not seen worse performance by a defending champion during a qualifier, he said, adding “there was no unity, no direction but that was a coaching deficiency and I saw that each player reflected an orientation and style of the club and country  where  he plays. And if a coach lacks the ability to marry an array of players into a formidable team, definitely there is problem. That was the case of the Eagles.  “Because football academies as we have here are not really what it because these are loosely organized, there is little to gain from it.