The African Football Development Initiative (AFDI) Global and the Major League Soccer Club, Houston Dynamo have worked together to train the coaches and young players of two football academies in Accra.
This is the second exercise in capacity-building and giving that AFDI has conducted with a significant collaboration this year.
The outreach effort had a positive impact on Light Academy and Fortune Academy.
Speaking after the event, Alidu Salifu, co-founder of the African Football Development Initiative and a sports management consultant, noted that such programs are meant to help young football players from underprivileged backgrounds who are nonetheless skilled and ambitious.
“I am pleased to be part of this initiative that offers skill and knowledge impartation in the area of football development.
We all realized that football development requires a lot of funding, so we are looking to collaborate with any organization in Ghana to make a difference in the career development of aspiring young footballers.
We hope for more collaborations like this which will impact the lives of the youth and by extension, their families,” Mr. Salifu said.
Houston Dynamo academy scout and coach, as well as head coach of the University of Houston Downtown Club Soccer, Thompson Antwi represented the MLS team. Antwi thinks Ghana has a ton of talent, but that the young players there are at a stage when they need better nutrition and growth for the game.
“The goal for us is to get them as young as possible to be able to refine and prepare them for their future professional football careers. We want to be able to get them as young as 8, 9, 10, 11 years to enhance their game not just from a physical standpoint, but also, intellectually; how they need to approach the game, what they need to do to be successful and truly achieve their full potential because there is a lot of it here.
“For the older talents like the 17, 18-year-olds, you can tell that their potential has not been properly nurtured. So, our ultimate goal is to ensure that their potential is properly nurtured at a very early age to reach their full potential”, Mr. Antwi intimated.
