The eight nation P&A U-13 and U-16 football tournament that kicked off in Kaduna at the weekend was aimed at discovering new talents the organiser, P&A Academy has said.
The tournament, which saw Kaduna state Commissioner for Sports Development, Mr Samaila Idris Nyam, take the kick-off at the Ahmed Musa Center on Saturday will feature eight African nations namely; Senegal, Mali, Ghana, Cameroon, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa and hosts Nigeria and will end July 30.
The opening match of the fivr-aside tourney saw Egypt and Senegal played a 4-4 draw in an exciting and interesting match. The tournament would only take place on weekends not to jeopardise the education of the partcipants who are secondary school students.
Speaking to sportswriters during the opening ceremony, Founder of P&A Academy and ex-Nigerian junior international, Patrick Adeolu, said the tournament was his own little way of giving back to the society that has benefited him, having played for Nigerian junior teams under late Coach Musa Abdullahi in 2001 and Austin Eguavoen in 2003.
“The essence of the tournament is to discover new talents, help humanity by removing the children from the streets away from vices and crimes. Our academy are for talented and indigent youth. Some of the parents of our players are poor, we have a parent who is blind yet we have taken his son to Europe. We have four players in Europe and 15 others in various NPFL clubs.
“We want to catch the players young, groom them, nurture them so that the problem in our national teams will not continue to be there. At this young age, they are amenable and can be taugh the basics of football,” he said.
The Kaduna state Commissioner for Sports Development, Mr. idris Nyam, in his remarks said, “We are happy to support this tournament. We talk about sports a lot because it engages the youth and takes them off the street and off vices. We want to take sports as big business because there is money in sports especially football. We are happy that P&A is giving back to football by engaging the youth and not taking themaway from their education”.
