The chief scout of the coach of the senior national team of Nigeria Tunde Adelakun says players playing in the Nigeria Professional Football League ( NPFL) are way harder to scout than those playing abroad.
Defending the fact that Rohr has focused more on players based abroad than the ones playing in the NPFL, Adelakun said the logistics require to scout a player based in Europe is quite easy than scouting a player in the NPFL.
According to Adelakun, while he can scout a player based abroad from anywhere in the world he can’t do same for players in the NPFL as the games are mostly not on television and that has made it hard for him to recommend players to coach Gernot Rohr.
“Scouting for players overseas is easy for me because there is a special software device I use to track Nigerian foreign-based players’ performance online.
“Any Nigerian player that is doing fine in Europe, if I get his contact and data, I use the device to watch his clips and study his performance. After this process, if I am satisfied, I will recommend to Rohr and he will also assess the player before taking the step to approach the player in his base.
“I have tapes and recordings of so many Nigerian players doing well abroad. But the NPFL is a different mater. The league matches are not online, so it is not easy to use the software to watch a particular player’s performance.
“It is not that there are no good players in the Nigerian domestic league, but there needs to be a process to constantly monitor a player’s performance in his club,” he was quoted as saying by Guardian.
Ade Emmanuel
