The Revelative Painful Story of a Soccer Scout in Nigeria - "We are now at that stage that will determine if we will continue to live in Abia State or not because loosing at that stage means we will not get money to transport ourselves back to the GATEWAY State."

The Revelative Painful Story of a Soccer Scout in Nigeria - Oceejay

Take a look at this picture very well...

This picture was taken in Abia State in the 2010.. It was the final between my team Sparrow and the hosting state.. What I want to point out from his picture is my team (in lemon and white) were all young guys, 90% of them have not travelled outside their state or region..

Immediately my friend Emmanuel Chinomso Udeze (the then South East Coordinator for Federation of Youth Soccer Club, FEYSOC) invited us, I had 2 reasons why I should honour the visition.. 1) To expose this guys 2) And also for them to see how Igbo land looks like.

I trained these wonderful lads for good 6 months in preparation for the South East Easter Cup 2010, we played friendly matches and some preparatory competitions.

There was no sponsor, we had to tax our parents.. We left with half bag of rice no ingredients but what we had then was love.. 

We played our first match against Morning Star FC of Anambra which ended goalless, the funniest part was that our opponent was jubilating my own boys were crying, they couldn't come closer to me, on getting back to our hostel, I sat at the entrance so none of them could even dare try to go in.. They were perplexed, weak and sad.. After some hours, I called them together, encouraged them and told them that the trophy must go to Ogun State.. They promised to win and make me happy, we prayed and look for what to eat why our opponent are busy frying stew and chicken.

Our feeding formula changed to 0-1-0 cause we don't have much food. 

To cut the story short, we played until we get to semi final. We met a diehard team from River State in the semifinal, We are now at that stage that will determine if we will continue to live in Abia State or not because loosing at that stage means we will not get money to transport ourselves back to the GATEWAY State. 

So that match kicked off, the River State team seeing that my players were too young devised a means of playing poll to poll, they played air ball all through thereby stressing out my small bodied defenders WF Osama Gold and Ajibike Olamitunji (I still love you guys 😢).. They were already leading us 2:1 and we have just 2 minutes left to the final whistle.. Come and see my bench, all my boys has turned prayer warriors, quoting what Jesus said and the one he did not, at the die minute, my opponent coach came to our bench to mock us asking us if we can pray more than him.. Just a minute to the end of the game, my player Wasiu (Owode) from the outside left shoot the ball into our opponent's net, come and see jubilation everywhere, after some seconds the game came to an end and straight to penalty shoot out.. My Goalkeeper Taofeek Oluwafemi Deejayxlove caught 2 penalty kicks, while some went over the bar and my boys scored all their kicks.. Our opponent's keeper ended up in Hospital. That was how we triumphantly enter into the final, we won the team in this picture 1:0 even when the referee added 15 minutes just to favour our opponent. 

We came back home triumphantly but my pain now is that 95% of those players are no more in the game because there was no support and I don't want that to happen to the current set cos my passion for this game is dying gradually.

To all my old players that sees this post, know that I still love you guys and I wish you all well.


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To Support Sparrow FC or Soccer Scouting Contact:
Jonathan Okpara (Oceejay)  +234 903 388 1994