It started small. The idea to bring a few young footballers of different age categories together, every weekend, to learn the rudiments of the sport with the ultimate goal of developing them into full-fledged professionals.
The idea has not only caught on, it has expanded to become a thriving football clinic that has become a household name in Abuja, Nigeria's capital city.
These days, it is common to see young footballers in their teens, with their parents in toe, thronging the FA. FC -- the Femi Ajilore Football Clinic -- to participate or watch training sessions at the academy.
Parents and visitors are given first-hand doses of basic training routines as coaches take their children and wards through some ball work, dribbling, positioning, passing and scoring techniques.
At the end of the day, everyone leaves, satisfied that they learned something useful -- whether they were actively involved in the training sessions or not.
Such is the increasing influence of this weekend football initiative that it now not only brings together youths for football games, but serves as a veritable relaxation venue for sports-inclined residents seeking a place to unwind after a hectic week of work.
Yet, this project would have remained only but a dream had one man not taken active steps to bring it into reality. Yes, but for a certain Olympian and an ex-Super Eagles'star, Femi Ajilore, the FA. FC football academy may never have seen the light of day.
"My vision to introduce the FA.Football Clinic originated from my desire to blood new talents that would take the Nigerian game into much higher levels in the future," Ajilore tells Weekend Sports Review (WSR) in a recent interview.
"The initiative provides me the platform to give something back to the game that gave me fortune and fame, just as it opens the door to young, talented footballers to build on their passion for the sport and possibly make it a source of livelihood," he adds.
Ajilore who won a silver with the U-23 Eagles team in the football event at the Beijing 2008 Olympics feels fulfilled that he has been able to achieve the primary objective of doing exactly what he set out to do when he started his weekend football clinic in Abuja a few years ago.
Despite what he recalls as a rough start, he is still grateful that he was able to weather the storm of start up capital and apathy from certain quarters to set the ball of his huge vision rolling.
"It is always very difficult to start this sort of catch-them-young project which has the vision to impart the rudiments of the sport into our young, up and coming stars. There's usually voices of apathy and discouragement trying to distract or frustrate someone, but I am grateful to God that I was able to wade through it all and get to where I am with the project right now," he says.
Despite the relative relief he has gotten from a few affiliations and sponsorship he has earned from some interested corporate partners, Ajilore feels there is still so much ground to cover.
He looks forward to the day he would be able to expand the clinic's operations through owning a permanent structure that will not only serve as an outlet for training footballers but one for training coaches as well.
"We are looking at building a permanent structure for FA.FC so that it can serve as a place for training footballers and coaches in the future. That is why we would be appealing to corporate Nigeria to partner with us on this project as we get along," he says.
Ajilore gives his views on the often unsubstantiated allegations of money-induced selections in the national teams, stressing the need for more transparency in the manner players are invited to all cadres of the country's national teams.
"I am aware that there have been complaints about biased, money-induced selections in our national teams in the past. Even though many of these allegations have remained unproven, I still want to suggest that there should be more transparency in the way we select players to represent our country in our national teams from the age-grade level to the senior teams, male and female.
"Then, we must improve our scouting network both home and abroad to unearth the very best players to man certain positions in our teams devoid of sentiments, as well as strive harder to develop the standard of our league to the level that it can produce the quality of personnel we need to represent us in major international competitions," he says.
Ajilore who played for clubs like FC Midtjylland, Brondby IF and Middlefart BK (Denmark), FC Groningen (Holland), and Hos Wickede (Germany) during his playing days, believes the general global level of football can be upgraded and made better by initiating policies that makes the game easy to play or understand while ensuring that more and more followers of the sport are educated on it's ever changing dynamics.
"The surest way to make football development an easy task to accomplish is to make it simpler for the followers of the sport to understand. There also needs to be more education on the changing dynamics of the sport," he says.
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