FOJEIS urges youth to leverage football talent for lifelong learning

The Friends Of Jesus Excelling In Sports (FOJEIS) has urged grassroots football players to leverage their sporting talents for lifelong learning.

This was made known during a one-day workshop on grassroots sports development tagged ‘FOJEIS TALKS’ with focus on voluntary, self-motivated, and continuous pursuit of knowledge for personal and professional growth.

“I thank God for how far it has gone and the meaningful conversations that we’ve been able to have,” Tolu Joshua, convener, FOJEIS, said on Saturday during the workshop, themed,

‘Turning Grassroot Sports into Real life Opportunities.’

She added that the aim of the workshop was to directly impact the youth on and off the field towards becoming meaningful individuals in the society.

Joshua said FOJEIS plans to organise a football camp meeting for 200 young footballers and a cup tournament sometime in August as part of its 10th anniversary celebration.

“This is also a landmark year for us because this is our tenth year. And I think our general target for the year also will be that we can also have a tournament cup, where we can also engage them on the pitch,” Joshua said.

Angel Salt, founder, F8ballers Africa,  said grassroots sports academies must understand the business side of sport development.

He added that it is very important that the people who are running football academies should both learn about structure and practice a structure-based academy.

“And this structure we’re talking about is not just filling up positions. It’s a business-oriented, entrepreneurship mindset. And that means in business, you’re either making profits or recording losses.”

According to him, tye structure behind sporting academies provide platforms for the exchange of football education and life skills.

“And their parents are appreciating that knowledge exchange. So, whether you call that payment. But what I’m saying is that in the past eight years, F8ballers Africa has been sustained. We keep bringing up new things,” he said.

According to him, sports management has gone beyond having passion for the games. “I call myself a football preneur because I brought an entrepreneurship mindset into starting a football academy.