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KUNLE SONAME, Remo Stars FC Owner
About 3 weeks ago or so, you and I were at MKO Abiola Sports Arena in Abeokuta, where Remo Stars, the champion club of Nigeria today, probably the most successful club of this era, played against Mamelodi Sundowns of South Africa in the Champions Club Cup. And by the end of that match, so many things became glaring. One of them is that, whereas the South Africans had 7 or 8 of their players playing in their national team, and all of them were local players in their domestic league playing for Mamelodi or whatever their name is, Sundowns, we had Remo Stars, on the other hand, who, on becoming champions of Nigeria, had 6 players who could easily have been in the national team but had been sold to Europe and were no longer in the team.
And so we saw this yearning gap in the quality of performances between the two clubs. Is it that selling players to Europe the way we are doing is affecting the quality of our clubs, particularly in the champions club competitions in Nigeria? Do you see where I’m heading? If you had had the six or so that you sold in your team, the game would have ended differently. But now we saw the glaring differences between the South African League and the Nigerian League and the effect on the national teams of the two countries.
Is the emphasis more on moving players abroad or developing them for the national league or the national team? Or why are they moving the way they are doing and South African players are not moving that way?
“This topic is multifaceted.
It’s a whole lot. So football is a business for us. That is the objective.
Clubs, even abroad, must sell players to remain afloat. It’s just like you said, it’s glaring that when you have players in the national team that are local-based players or that are home-based players, it has its own advantages because you can gather them together for a week very quickly, put them in a camp, let them train, and that helps with their cohesion. But if they are all abroad, scattered everywhere, that becomes a bit cumbersome.
And of course, even the European clubs won’t leave their players unless it’s a FIFA international window. So definitely that advantage is there for having that home-based players in the national team. That helps a lot.
And that is evident in the fact that we are in the same group with South Africa and they qualified ahead of us. I’m not saying that is the only reason, but that clearly must have helped them. There are many reasons why players go abroad.
But the fundamental reason, the main reason, is for them to better their own lots and the lots of their families. Clubs, for instance, clubs like mine, were forced to sell players abroad. In some instances, some we willingly do, some we were kind of forced to do.
It’s a Nigerian thing. Not all players are professionals. Once they get an offer from abroad, they come and say, no, my friend, you still have two more years on your contract, there’s no way you’re going to leave.
Then you start seeing the father, the mother, the uncle, everybody begging, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to make money, for us to be able to live better. At the end of the day, you are kind of forced to release those players. That is on one side.
On the other side, the club itself still has to remain afloat. I can boldly say that the budgets of a professional football club in Nigeria playing in MPFL in a season is minimum 500 million..
That’s the barest minimum. You must kind of raise that. Of course, we all know that the attendance in our leagues is not really much these days.
That’s unlike where you were playing, where we usually come to watch you. The stadiums were filled to the brim, people are willing to pay to watch games and things like that. That is no longer there.
The major avenue for clubs to make money now is by trading players. For us, in the last three, four seasons, I don’t put a dime of my money into the club. The club runs itself, gets its own money, runs itself, makes their expenses.
I just go there, watch the games and then enjoy myself. Clubs must sell to remain afloat. Now, imagine if good players do not need to go abroad, in the kind of numbers they do.
Just like you said, last season, you know, maybe sent about three players from Rebel Stars abroad to raise money, to run the club and things like that. But these players certainly will not have gone abroad if there is enough money in the game in Nigeria. That is where the problem lies.
That is the critical issue we need to solve for. There must be more money in the game in Nigeria. Imagine if a player can earn, let’s say $1,000, say $1.5 million a year.
Yeah. You know, there is a likelihood that he will be patient to wait, play, and then sustain his family. You know, even at $1,000, there are players in Mamelodi, Sundowns that earn $12,000, $13,000, some around $8,000.
So you can’t see them go anywhere. Because they don’t need to. There’s no reason to.
So their best legs remain in their leagues. And of course, you know that, just like you know, in football, iron sharpens iron, for sure. When you keep playing against good players, you know, on a weekly basis, you try to get better.
And also, when you are surrounded by good players in your own team, you perform better as well. So even if you have two, three good players, and then others are average players, you are never going to see the kind of results you want. So until that time, that there is enough money in the league.
In this league, for instance, it’s a 20-team league. And last season, 19 of the participants only collected $10 million each. And like I said, their experience is over $500 million, for sure.
So that is not sustainable. So it’s only governments that can do this. And they just put taxpayers’ money in there and keep rolling it.
Because for them, it’s probably a crime reduction strategy. Look, money you don’t spend on youth development, you end up spending it on providing solutions for crime. So until that time, that we are able to attract big money into this league, this will keep going on.
Look, we didn’t stand a chance. Yes, we sold some players. Yeah, that’s fine.
That’s normal. But even the best of us, the best of us, if we had not sold any player, we would still have lost. Yes, maybe the results wouldn’t have been that bad.
And then, of course, the results shouldn’t have been even that bad. I guess two things affected us. One, our preparation was not good enough.
And I’ve said it, you know, that from the outset that we didn’t prepare well enough. But even if we had, right, the quality was just different. I mean, we both saw the game.
The quality was different. It’s a different league. I mean, they are in another league.
So we would still have lost anyway. So the podcast you saw where I said, look, we didn’t stand a chance, that was recorded like three months before we played Mamelodi. And I wasn’t referring to Mamelodi.
I was just referring to the North Africans. Look, when clubs pay as much as even $5,000, your best legs will go there. Best legs every year.
Year in, year out. The outstanding players in our league move out. So how do you expect us to move? I mean, like to compete?
So it’s important that we must attract big money into this league. And like I always say, it’s a matter of kicking an egg. Big money will not come until we improve the league.
And to improve the league, we need big money. So which comes first? That is the riddle we have to solve for.
You have painted a picture for us, a correct picture of our status in African football, because the North Africans are doing a lot better in terms of their club football. Now, the South Africans have joined them.
South Africa that came to learn from Nigeria in 1993, two years after we started professional football in Nigeria. And we are saying that we want government to hands off the running of football. And you have just revealed to us now that it is only government, apart from you, and see the methodology you have used to even sustain your club, ahead of so many others that have tried and failed.
It’s only governments that have the resources to sustain even this low level of national league that we are running. 500 million minimum to run a league. How are we going to get that money? OK, you are a businessman.
How will this league become so rich that clubs can start to make money from the league itself, not the 10 million that each one of you got in the past three seasons at the end of the year. That’s not enough to pay wages for one month. So where are we? What’s the possibility? You are trying.
There’s no other like you. And yet, we have the government clubs. And yet, we have people saying government should hands off.
So I don’t understand how this is going to work out. Your thoughts?
OK, so big sheg. There is a way out.
There is a way out. Commercialization of football resides in the youth. What we sell to these Europeans is actually expectation, not the skill itself, not the acts itself.
We sell expectation. And that is, look, if a boy can play like this at age 18, if he gets to your club in Europe, you can imagine how he’s going to develop. That is what they buy.
They will never see finished product here and buy. It’s just simply not good enough. So for me, any serious private person that wants to do this business must have a proper, functional, well-run academy.
Because that is where the money is for now. When scouts, sports directors, when they come to Nigeria, they don’t go to the leagues. They don’t go to NPFL to go and look for players.
No. They go to the academies. Because that is where the raw talent is.
OK, for instance, I was speaking to someone yesterday, Frederica. And so he said to me that, look, he checks on Yscouts. Yscouts is a platform whereby all players, their statistics, their videos, they’re exposed to the world.
And he said on Yscouts, the best you can see of NPFL was in the year 2017. That was the latest they could find on Yscouts. 2017.
But if you go to these smaller leagues, go to a league called TCC League, they’re on Yscouts, they’re on iBall, they’re on these platforms. Because we just sit down in our own academy and we get calls from European scouts, European sports directors. Look, oh, we’ve seen this player.
Can he come for trials? Can he do this? Can he, you know, without we reaching out to them? Because we have put them on the global platform. So to your question, anybody that wants to do this business must go and set up a proper academy whereby the kids will be taught properly. Because like I said, really set expectations.
So if you are trying to sell a 24-year-old boy now, nobody’s going to buy from you. Nobody. No Europeans are going to buy.
So they’ll only buy 18, 19, maximum, maximum. If you’re 20, a probability. So the academy has to function properly.
– Interview By Segun Odegbami
