Esteem school has emerged champion of 2024 Yoshi Dubai Abuja private school tournament in the senior secondary school category after beating Chelfield school 2 – 0 in the finals.
Esteem started with early lead in the game when its striker placed the ball passed the goal keeper in a sublime manner despite entering the encounter with the school principal who took proceedings of the team after his side’s coach was red carded by the referee in the first half of the final.
Speaking in a post match interview, Esteem principal, Abubakar Ilani, said he got to know the rules of the round leather game through being a registered foodball referee even though he did not know the players very well unlike the coach. Meanwhile, Esteem coach revealed that he told his players to maintain the 3,3,2 formation because the opponent has a small pitch and do not usually play on big pitch.
Coach Ahmed Mustapha, CEO of Yoshi Football Academy, Dubai expressed his delight on success of the tournament, congratulates Esteem, other teams, organizing committee and officials.
”I feel excited and thank the organizing committee, we have achieved a mile stone with this success, our aim is to revive grassroot football and breed more talents for the future of our country in football.”, he said.
Coach Anyanwu Marcello, Yoshi Dubai Sporting director equally expressed his joy, ”I feel really happy here today that myself, my colleague and brother Ahmed Mustapha came all the way from Dubai and did a wonderful job by conducting private school tournaments for primary schools, junior secondary schools and senior secondary schools.”
“For the teams, its all about hard work and team spirit. You will recall that Start-Rite won the primary school category, since then, they haven’t gotten anything. Roberto won the Junior secondary school category last week, today is Esteem that emerge Champion.”
”Roberto was disqualified today because they tried to play a student who had graduated from the school so when we discovered, we have to disqualify them.”
“We want to keep organizing this type of tournament from time to time, if we get support from the federal government, corporate bodies, individuals, religious bodies etc., then we take it from there, we can as well take the Tournaments to public schools.”
“The reason we are doing this is to give back to the society, harness talents, identify promising and passion young players then we wouldn’t mind to open a branch of the Yoshi Dubai Academy in Nigeria.”
Also while speaking to the media, Dr Alex Sule Umana, retired FIFA referee and NIS retired said this type of tournaments will spur developing in the Nigeria age grade games.
“I have been in the NIS as a coach and head of a department.
This tournament is one of the type of tournaments we want to see in the present day Nigeria. The reason is that most of our age grade competition are moribund and this is the best way we can go. I don’t think stake holders should leave this huge tasks in the hands these two young men alone.”
“The reason I said it’s going to work is that the private school tournaments has worked well, so public schools can join and if they join and government joined, private organizations and individuals and if the banks and the rest can sponsor things like this I think Nigeria will be back to winning ways, ” he mentioned.
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