Ilaji Hotel &Sports Resort, Akanran Ibadan, Oyo State, in collaboration with Malaga Football Club, Spain has come up with a platform that ensures the discovery and nurturing of football talents.
The course for the assemblage of budding football talents globally had made it possible for Ilaji Hotel & Sports Resort to affiliate with Malaga FC to birth Malaga FC Academy of Nigeria.
Tall Muhammed who came from Dakar in Senegal is one of the trainees, he shared his experience saying, “since I joined Malaga Football Club here in Ibadan, the experience has been awesome, and one of the best ever.
He narrated,”when I came here, I thought everything will all be about competition, I thought we will all keep competing with one another to find out who will be the best. But actually, it’s not about competition. We came here, we train regularly together and go back to camp, we talk to one another on how we can become a better player”.
“We encourage ourselves and work hard everyday. The intensity is very high here, you can’t do it alone so we work together hand in hand and everything has been good. It’s been a very good experience, Muhammed added”.
Speaking about the future of the academy, Mr Babatunde Odubola, Head Coach, Ilaji FC/Malaga CF Academy of Nigeria has expressed his surprise to see most of the players exhibiting great talents, which will make it easy for them to grow quickly to the peak.
“We are really surprised to see that some of them are very talented, technically most of them are sound and they have the knowledge. We just need to work on their tactical ability. And we believe that in a couple of months, some of them will be representing Nigeria in all the levels of national team and we believe that in a very short time, most of them will be in either Malaga or any club in Europe,” he said.
The Chief Operating Officer, Ilaji Hotels and Sports Resort, Prince Adeshina Araoye also talked about the collaboration with Malaga to create a platform for discovery and nurturing of sporting talents.
He said,”as the management, we are greatly delighted that as part of our vision to create a platform for discovery and nurturing of sporting talents to start up and we also have another platform with our collaborative arrangement with Malaga, Spain and this is other platform to discover talents, to excel and we are still counting”.
“This is a great opportunity to call on people who are yet to take this opportunity, it’s open to all the lovers of football. They can come and experience what we are doing at Ilaji football club,” he submitted.
Engr. Dotun Sanusi,The Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Ilaji Hotel & Sports Resort said,”today is another phase in the journey of Ilaji sports, and this is a platform for every talented young player who wants to showcase himself to the world. Ilaji football academy is the answer to the dream”.
“We are always here to make sure that anyone who needs support will get it and be able to showcase himself”.
