Nathaniel Asamoah, 7 others set for Marseille, Lyon, Monaco, Madrid move

....Tawrick Djibril misses boat.

(By: NiiAyi Tetteh)

Three Premier League players including Nathaniel Asamoah of Wa All Stars, Daniel Koffie, Stephen Owusu, plus four Division One players, Seidu Dabo, Paul Ampretwum, Richard Annan and Larry Tetteh are set to join European clubs in France, Spain and Portugal after passing series of intensive trials organised by a team of European scouts from France, Spain Portugal headed by Olivier Noah, a FIFA licensed player agent of Noga Sports Management in collaboration with International Allies Sports Consult (Gh).

The exercise which spanned for ten days (February 11th – 20th 2010) took place at three different stadia in Accra, namely El-Wak Sports Stadium, home of Premier League side Great Olympics, Tema Stadium and the Presec Legon Park, saw over eighty-five Premiership and first Division players from other regions including players from Nigeria, Cameroon, Senegal, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Niger participating.

At the end of the ten-day exercise, fourteen players got selected after making and meeting the requirements by the various football scouts.

The fourteen, out of which Eight are Ghanaians, the rest made up of young and talented players including Nigeria’s best youth player, Ramon Aziz, who won the third best player award during last year’s FIFA U-17 tournament held in Nigeria, Yusif Abontage, also a member of the Nigeria U-17 team, Chico Plebe and Bale Lassina from Ivory Coast and Ohandja Franck from Cameroon.

In a move to see how these selected players will perform on a bigger stage, the organizers, Noga Sports Management in collaboration with International Allies Sports Consult arranged for them to play defending Premier League Champions, Accra Hearts of Oak at the ATTC park in their final test game last Friday and they were a delight to watch.

However, one sensational player the organizers would have loved to include was Hearts of Oak petit winger, Tawrick Djibril, whose thirty minutes performance on the day with Hearts of Oak did not impress the organizers enough to be selected and they wanted to see him more.

Speaking to reporters after the Hearts game, Olivier Noah, expressed his worry on the reluctance of Premier Club officials to release their players for the ten days exercise as his agency had wished to have a wider scope of players participated in the exercise as they had targeted selecting a minimum of thirty players due to the demand from the European sides.

He hinted that the live telecast of the Glo Premier League on international television contributed to the agency’s decision to stage the competition in Ghana as a bunch of soccer talents are seen in most of the matches shown.

Another factor that also contributed in the exercise being staged in Ghana was the Cold whether in Europe at the moment as players sometimes faced difficulty during this time of the season, a decision that made the clubs AS Monaco, FC Nantes, Losc, Olympic Lyon, Olympic Marseille and Asse all in France and Sporting Gijon, Rayo Vallecano, Sevilla FC,Atletico De Madrid, Malaga CF, Celta De Vigo Atletic Madrid and Sporting de Braga in Portugal to send down their own scouts to do the monitoring.

According to Olivier Noah, the selected fourteen players are set to sign for the respective clubs who are based in France, Spain and Portugal pending their medical examination.

The event which is first of it kind in West Africa will now be organized annually according to Olivier Noah.

He however added that next year’s exercise will be organized during the recess of the Glo Premier League in order to have a wider scope to players to choose from.