Tuesday, 18 April 2017

Chukwuemeka: ABS not a club for ‘pensioners’

.Says club not interested in 'ready-made' players

By Akeem Lawal
THE General Manager of the Nigeria Professional Football League side, Abubakar Bukola Saraki (ABS FC), Alloy Chukwuemeka has said that the club remained committed to development of young talents and will not go into the market for ready-made players.


In a chat with Sportsbiz247.blogspot.com in Lagos on Tuesday, Chukwuemeka said the mandate given by the owner of the clubs, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki is to develop young talents and give them hope of making it through the game of football.

 “The philosophy of the club is to encourage young players, developmental football and that is the mandate given us by the owners of the club, His Excellency, Senate President, Bukola Saraki. He said we should try to develop talent to make the club an example for others to emulate.

“If you look at our players, we don’t recruit anyhow. Any player we are recruiting must not be above 23 years, so that is to tell you that we concentrate more on young talents, we don’t buy already made, whom we call pensioners. We take only young players.

“When we got relegated in 2013, we lost 27 of our players to premier league clubs. This time around, we went back to Kwara Football Academy and other catch point areas where we select these young boys.

“If you look at them they are young boys that are ready to play football. They know that after the season a lot of clubs will be looking for them. Even now a lot of clubs are looking for them. About nine players have been penciled down to move, but what we are trying to do is to talk to them, psyche them for them to calm down and concentrate to develop their talents more. We don’t hold any player because football is about movement, but be that as it may, we still advocate that continuity is good,” Chukwuemeka told Sportsbiz247.blogspot.com.

The Saraki Boys will face El-Kanemi Warriors in Maiduguri as the first round of the 2016/2017 NPFL season comes to an end after today’s week 19 round of matches and the club's director of football expressed satisfaction with the team’s campaign, even as he reveals plans for the mid-season transfer.

“Even though we have not ended the first round, we have a match to go by tomorrow (Wednesday) against El-Kanemi Warriors in far away Maiduguri, but so far so good, the first round was good. You could see that we started very well, we were around second, third, fourth before we had some bad results and we drew some matches at home that took us down to nine now. That is not bad for a team like ABS that has just gained promotion, taking into consideration the road to the Premier League.

“I want to assure you that we will try to ensure that we ganner all the available results because by second round we will be having more home maches.  We played double away matches in the first round, we will play double home matches in the second round and that will amass more points for us to finish in the first four which is our target this season.

“The coach has given us his papers and at the end of tomorrow, which is the end of the first round, we will look at his papers, know the areas he wants to fortify because somebody must go before another one comes in."


PHOTO CREDIT: Abdul Momoh Photography



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