Former Benin Rep Star Advocates French Football Development Template for Nigeria, Others

Former Benin Republic player, Jean-Marc Adjovi-Bocco has noted that for football to work in Nigeria and the rest of Africa, the youth must be developed with proper planning and collective responsibility of the football administrations in the country.

Adjovi-Bocco also noted that the league and the football associations need to be awake to the same idea and vision.

“It’s quite simple, to have good football in a country, you have to work hard on the youth like in the french national team because in about 40 years ago, they decided to work on the youth because if a country does not work on youth, there won’t be a success. There has to be hard work but really quietly,” Jean-Marc Adjovi-Bocco told BRL.

Jean-Marc Adjovi-Bocco also noted that it is however not enough to develop the youths alone, but that coaches have to be produced to complete the process of development.

PSG’s David Ginola (C) fights for the ball with defenders Jean-Marc Adjovi-Bocco (R) and Jean-Guy Wallemme (L) of RC Lens.(Photo credit should read PASCAL PAVANI/AFP via Getty Images)

“It is not enough, you need to work on coaches, if you have good players without good coaches, they won’t know how to play.

“Our problem in Africa is not technique, we have technical players, but football is all about tactics, professionalism, how to eat, how to sleep, and not to go to parties before games, we must teach them, not only to teach them how to touch the ball or control, the fans relations, the social media and everything.

“The Europeans are not better than us in football but need to teach them (Youth) all these things. We need to go to the top level to do these things. We need to see how they do things but we must keep our identity, We need to build our own identity.”